Americas: Did you mean...?

Massasoit (l. c. 1581-1661) was the sachem (chief) of the Wampanoag Confederacy of modern-day New England, USA. Massasoit (also given as Massasoyt) is a title meaning Great Sachem; his given name was Ousamequin of the Pokanoket tribe of modern-day...

Thomas Morton (l. c. 1579-1647 CE) was an English lawyer, poet, writer, and an early colonist of North America who established the utopian community of Merrymount, sparking conflict with his separatist neighbors at Plymouth Colony and the...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage from...

The Palaeolithic ('Old Stone Age') makes up the earliest chunk of the Stone Age – the large swathe of time during which hominins used stone to make tools – and ranges from the first known tool use roughly 2,6 million years ago to the end...

Animal husbandry is commonly defined as a branch of agriculture dealing with the domestication, breeding, and rearing of animals for various purposes including labor (as in the case of large animals), a food source, protection, and companionship...

The Eighty Years' War (1568-1648, also known as The Dutch Revolt and Dutch War of Independence) was a military conflict between the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands and Spain, which then governed them, beginning in the reign of King...

The First Agricultural Revolution, beginning c. 12-20,000 years ago, was characterized by the emergence of different agricultural systems in different parts of the world, whose common trait was the use of native species. Although agriculture...

Portuguese Angola in southwest Africa was the first European colony on that continent. While settlement from 1571 proved problematic in the interior, the Portuguese did obtain a large number of slaves which they shipped to their Atlantic...

Edmond Halley (1656-1742) was an English astronomer, mathematician, and cartographer. Halley's Comet is named after him since he accurately predicted its return in 1758. One of the early globetrotting scientists, Halley led several maritime...

The emergence of Spain as a global imperial power began with the dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon under Isabella I of Castile (reign 1474–1504) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (reign 1479–1516). Their reigns marked a turning...