Duchy of Warsaw: Did you mean...?

Blitzkrieg ('lightning war') is a military tactic combining air and land forces deployed at speed against the enemy's weaker points while the rear lines are simultaneously disrupted by acts of sabotage and bombing. Speed, concentration, and...

The Nazi-Soviet Pact, also called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the respective foreign ministers of the USSR and Germany, was a non-aggression agreement signed in August 1939. The pact allowed the leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler (1889-1945...

The Heinkel He 111 was a medium two-engined bomber plane used by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) during the Second World War (1939-45). Heinkel He 111s contributed significantly to such campaigns as the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain...

Faras was an important town near Abu Simbel in southern Egypt/northern Kush (modern-day Sudan). It was a center of trade and administrative offices which was founded between 2040-1750 BCE. In the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE) a temple to Hathor...

Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski, photograph by Karol Beyer, c. 1861-1863. Appointed by the Tsar to dampen brewing discontent and growing independence feeling in Warsaw, Wielopolski (1803-1877), a Polish aristocrat, devised a plan to conscript...

King of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanisław August enters St John's Cathedral of Warsaw, where Sejm members will swear to uphold the Constitution. Oil on canvas, 1891. Royal Castle, Warsaw.

Portrait of Romuald Traugutt, photograph, c. 1862. Romuald Traugutt (1826-1864) was the final military leader of the ill-fated January Uprising of 1863, an attempt to regain Polish independence from Tsarist Russia. Traugutt, from his clandestine...

Frederick III of Sicily (r. 1295-1337 CE) 14th-century CE mosaic in the Messina Cathedral.

Antonio I Acciaioli (r. 1403-1435 CE), Duke of Athens. Illustration from Atene Attica Descritta da suoi Principii sino all’acquisto fatto dall’Armi Venete nel 1687…, Venice, Antonio Bortoli, 1695 edition, by Francesco Fanelli

In his search to secure the continuation of the Tudor line, Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547 CE) married an incredible six times. Some marriages were the result of passion while others were arranged for political reasons. One divorce caused...