Erie Canal: Did you mean...?

The siege of the port of Tobruk in Libya (April to Dec 1941) by Axis forces during the Second World War (1939-45) lasted 242 days and became a symbol of Allied resistance. Besieged by land but still supplied by sea, Tobruk was of vital strategic...

The Mahdist War (1881-99) in Sudan was led by the inspirational Muhammad Ahmad, an Islamic holy man who declared himself the Mahdi (the Messiah). The Mahdists wanted to overthrow Ottoman-Egyptian rule in Sudan and spread a new form of Islam...

The Enuma Elish (also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation) is the Babylonian creation myth whose title is derived from the opening lines of the piece, "When on High". The myth tells the story of the great god Marduk's victory over the...

The ancient Near East, and the historical region of the Fertile Crescent in particular, is generally seen as the birthplace of agriculture. The first agricultural evidence comes from the Levant, from where it spread to Mesopotamia, enabling...

With thousands of square feet of canvas capturing every breath of the trade winds, a 19th-century tea clipper was the absolute pinnacle of sailing evolution. The Cutty Sark was just such a ship, carrying tea and then wool across the far-flung...

Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli, Italy, is an opulent, sprawling garden-villa covering some 120 hectares (296 acres). It was built by Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) between 125-134 CE for use as his country estate, although the land may have originally...

Oliver Hazard Perry rows to the USS Niagara during the Battle of Lake Erie (10 September 1813), by Edward Percy Moran, 1911. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Ancient Persian culture flourished between the reign of Cyrus II (The Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and the fall of the Sassanian Empire in 651 CE. Even so, the foundations of Persian culture were already...

The Berlin Conference, also known as the Berlin West Africa Conference, was held between November 1884 and February 1885. Imperial powers, notably Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany, met to thrash out their competing claims for control...

Shi Huangdi (l.259-210 BCE/r.221-210 BCE, also known as Qin Shi Huang, Qin Shih Huandi, Shi Huangti or Shih Huan-ti) was the first emperor of a unified China. Shi Huangdi means `First Emperor' and is a title, not a proper name. The Qin Dynasty...