[Transcriber's Notes: "Students of history are doomed to watch it repeat." —Dozens of similar observations. "History For Ready Reference" consists of 7 physical volumes, 3 kg. each. The last two volumes are supplements relating to events after 1890. The first five volumes form a single logical volume of 3935 pages, printed as 5 physical volumes. To make searches and cross references more convenient, this file combines these five volumes. The beginning of each volume is at these page numbers: Volume 1 - {1} Volume 2 - {769} Volume 3 - {1565} Volume 4 - {2359} Volume 5 - {3129} SUPPLEMENT - {3669} This production does not include an html version. The individual html files integrate the maps and other images, but provide no other useful service. Furthermore, my internet browsers do not reliably handle the size of this file. A list of all words used in this work is found at the end of this file as an aid for finding words with unusual spellings that are archaic, contain non-Latin letters, or are spelled differently by various authors. Search for: "Word List: Start". I use these free search tools: Notepad++ -- https://notepad-plus-plus.org Agent Ransack or FileLocator Pro -- https://www.mythicsoft.com The following modifications are intended to provide continuity of the text for ease of searching and reading. 1. To avoid breaks in the narrative, page numbers (shown in curly brackets "{1234}") are usually placed between paragraphs. In this case the page number is preceded and followed by an empty line. To remove page numbers use the Regular Expression: "^{[0-9]+}" to "" (empty string) 2. If a paragraph is exceptionally long, the page number is placed at the nearest sentence break on its own line, but without surrounding empty lines. 3. Blocks of unrelated text are moved to a nearby break between subjects. 5. Use of em dashes and other means of space saving are replaced with spaces and newlines. Many abbreviations are expanded to full words to simplify searches. 6. Subjects are arranged thusly: --------------------------------- MAIN SUBJECT TITLE IN UPPER CASE Subheading one. Subheading two. Subject text. See CROSS REFERENCE ONE. See Also CROSS REFERENCE TWO. _John Smith, External Citation Title, Chapter 3, page 89._ --------------------------------- Main titles are at the left margin, in all upper case (as in the original) and are preceded by an empty line. Some main titles include several synonyms or alternate spellings. Subtitles (if any) are indented three spaces and immediately follow the main title. Text of the article (if any) follows the list of subtitles (if any) and is preceded with an empty line and indented three spaces.