Watch: Origins on Video

These are our top ten musicals based on real-life people and events that have shaped the theatre.

In the Year of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo negotiated independence from Belgium to the rhythm of the country’s greatest export: Congolese rumba.

Alice in Wonderland, the little girl created by Oxford mathematician and logician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, came to life in 1865.

Cultures through history have heralded eclipses as portentous, ominous events.

The date, October 23, 1956, marked the beginning of the ill-fated revolution that ended with the re-imposition of Communist rule and the flight of some 200,000 Hungarians to Western Europe and the United States.

Public memory of the battle for Manila includes a mixture of gratitude toward the Americans, nationalistic defiance, and horror.

On December 18, 1898, the Jeantaud electric vehicle set the world’s first automotive land speed record of 63.13 km/hr (39.2 mph) over the course of a single kilometer.

After World War II, canned foods became more and more common, along with a smorgasbord of pre-prepared, processed foods such as SpaghettiOs.

The Soviet-German front that opened with Operation Barbarossa proved to be the decisive theater of the Second World War.

The Mariner 9 exploration of Mars was a good demonstration of how science and technology literally open new worlds for discovery.

In April 1896, participants from 14 countries converged on Athens to compete in a festival that was simultaneously ancient and modern.

The Marshall Plan, signed into law by President Harry Truman on April 3, 1948, was intended to revive the economies of war-torn Western Europe.

Today, Ludlow, Colorado is a ghost town, yet it remains the site of the deadliest labor war in American history in 1914.

Espionage has become more complex and increasingly valuable. The times change, but spies remain.

On March 12, 2004, South Korea’s then President Roh Moo-hyun was impeached, a historic first for the Republic.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, a monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, circulated his 95 Theses—95 statements critiquing what he saw as papal abuses of power.

When Idi Amin, commander of the Ugandan Army, seized power in Uganda on 25 January 1971, there was hope among many Ugandans that a new beginning beckoned.

Fossey replaced a fallacious stereotype of a King Kong-like, violent gorilla with an almost idealized image of a gorilla that was intelligent, family-oriented and peaceful.

In May 1954, the U.S. Border Patrol enacted “Operation Wetback,” a campaign to deport Mexican workers who were in the country illegally.

George Foreman’s 1974 heavyweight title defense against Muhammad Ali on October 30, 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire was a major turning point in the careers of both men.

Friedan’s book encouraged women to break free of what she called “the feminine mystique,” a concept insisting that women’s true fulfillment was to be found through dedication to household labor and their roles as wives and mothers.

Although observations and attempted treatments of diabetes date back to ancient times, the most important milestone occurred when a new treatment—insulin injection—was first successfully used on January 23, 1922.

Beginning on November 20, 1945, the International Military Tribunal consisting of representatives from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union worked together to bring 22 former Nazi leaders and their organizations to justice.

Augustus had an almost unmatched impact on Roman politics, culture, and society and—through the widespread influence of Rome—on the way modern countries structure and imagine themselves.

Few place names in American history produce such a visceral response as Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian bay that housed the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941.

On July 28, 1951, representatives of 26 states, meeting in Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations, signed the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Rosetta Tharpe crossed many boundaries: of genre (playing both gospel and secular music), of gender (playing in a “male” style on a “male” instrument), and even of sexuality.

On July 1, 1927, the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader Augusto Nicolás Calderón de Sandino, a.k.a. Augusto “César” Sandino, proclaimed his manifesto extolling continued Nicaraguan resistance against U.S. intervention in his country.

Besides the Wilsonian internationalists, who wanted the Treaty and Covenant ratified unchanged, there were those who wanted to add so-called reservations to the treaties: conditions to U.S. acceptance and participation in the League.

On Sunday, 18 March 1962, the Algerian War for Independence came to an end.

On March 9, 1848, the twenty-three members of the Hanau People’s Commission—leading citizens of the small German city on the Main River, upstream from Frankfurt—declared their participation in the quickly-spreading upheaval of the March 1848 Revolutions.

When you “pair the intellect with emotion and place,” what often results is a moment of insight: an unexpected instance where you suddenly understand something deeper about history, about nature, about others, about yourself.

On May 23rd 1951, the Seventeen Point Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet was signed.

Fifty years ago, in December 1969, the Provisional IRA was born from the widespread religious violence that had wracked the six counties of Northern Ireland since the preceding August.

Robert Smalls' leadership and courage made him important to the Union war effort and, afterwards, one of the most influential Black political leaders of the 19th century.

Japan’s Meiji Restoration, or Meiji Ishin, occurred on January 3, 1868, and marked the return of the Japanese emperor to a position of power for the first time in more than 500 years.

In 1975, the first United Nations World Conference on Women took place between 19 June and 2 July in Mexico City, bringing together individuals from a wide range of backgrounds with the goal of promoting gender equality.

The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920.

After John, Paul, George and Ringo brought the British Invasion across the Atlantic, rock and roll saw a resurgence that helped cement what many people called “race music” as a core part of American identity.

An uprising on June 28th, 1969 at New York's Stonewall Inn has become iconic as the spark for a new radical lesbian and gay activism.

Among the many states with eugenics legislation, Virginia is infamous for its legal campaign to forcibly sterilize Carrie Buck in 1927 and thereby entrench sterilization abuse as the law of the land.

The “Boston Massacre,” was a turning-point in relations between American colonists and British authorities, and provided one of the sparks that would ignite the American Revolution.

The 1887 passage of the Dawes Act upended this system of communal land ownership and, in doing so, struck a historic blow at Native Americans’ political rights, economic sufficiency, and cultural heritage.

The Zaporozhian Cossacks were a daring and fearsome people of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries whose adventures fill Ukrainian lore and inspire an enduring Ukrainian spirit of independence and daring.

Many observers have been surprised that this war has a religious dimension. Yet its roots lie in the intertwined but separate religious histories of Ukraine and Russia.

Just past noon on Monday, May 4, 1970, a squadron of Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire at a loose collection of students gathered across an expanse of leafy lawns and campus parking lots at Kent State University in northeastern Ohio.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Armistice went into effect, silencing the guns of the Western Front and ending the First World War. Or so the story goes.

Andy Warhol’s 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans have become a canonical symbol of American Pop Art.