Beard: Did you mean...?

On the evening of 30 May 1593, the sounds of a heated argument could be heard emanating from a boarding house in Deptford, a district of London on the south bank of the River Thames. Two of the...

The Raven tales are stories featuring the trickster figure Raven that come from the Athabaskan (Dene)-speaking peoples of the Pacific Northwest and other First Nations of the region of modern-day...

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of...

Nanna (also known as Nannar, Nanna-Suen, Sin, Asimbabbar, Namrasit, Inbu) is the Mesopotamian god of the moon and wisdom. He is one of the oldest gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon and is first mentioned...

In the late 6th century BCE, the small city-state of Rome overthrew the shackles of monarchy and created a republican government that, in theory if not always in practice, represented the wishes of its citizens. From this basis...

Medusa is a figure from Greek mythology, the only mortal of the three Gorgons, along with her immortal sisters, Stheno and Euryale. The three Gorgons were born to the sea god of the dangers of the hidden deep, Phorcys, and the goddess...

The monumental statue of Zeus at Olympia in Greece was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Created in the 430s BCE under the supervision of the master Greek sculptor Phidias, the huge ivory and gold statue was...

Henry VIII of England ruled as king from 1509 to 1547. The second Tudor king after his father Henry VII of England (r. 1485-1509), Henry had inherited a kingdom which enjoyed both unity and sound finances. Famous for his six...

The Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) refers to a period when robbery on the high seas and at colonial ports reached an unprecedented level. Although not all historians agree on the precise time frame, it is generally applied...

The Holy Roman Empire officially lasted from 962 to 1806. It was one of Europe’s largest medieval and early modern states, but its power base was unstable and continually shifting. The Holy Roman Empire was not a unitary state...