Genius: Did you mean...?

Archelaus of Athens (l. c. 5th century BCE) was a Pre-Socratic philosopher in ancient Greece who claimed the first cause of existence was the opposition of cold and heat which caused the separation of the universal essence to produce a plurality...

Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) first assumed the role of dictator in 49 BCE, however, once he had secured his election as consul for the following year, he resigned after 11 days. After defeating Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48...

The brutal murder of the entire Romanov family was the culmination of deep discontent across the Russian Empire with the persistently autocratic rule of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917). Following the disaster of the First World War (1914-18...

The gods of the Mesopotamian region were not uniform in name, power, provenance or status in the hierarchy. Mesopotamian culture varied from region to region and, because of this, Marduk should not be regarded as King of the Gods in the same...

The game of chess has a particularly long and fascinating history of more than 1500 years. Over the centuries, there have also been hundreds of different chess variants, all of which incorporate the fundamental distinguishing feature of standard...

Hatshepsut, whose name means "Foremost of Noble Women" or "First Among Noble Women" (royal name, Ma'at-ka-re, translated as "spirit of harmony and truth") was the fifth ruler of the 18th Dynasty (r. 1479-1458 BCE). She was the daughter of...

The structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was discovered in 1953 by two molecular biologists, James Dewey Watson (1928-2025) and Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004). Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine...

Achilles The hero of the Trojan War, leader of the Myrmidons, slayer of Hector and Greece's greatest warrior, who sadly came unstuck when Paris sent a flying arrow guided by Apollo, which caught him in his only weak spot, his heel. Adonis...

History is not predictable; in many ways it can take on a life of its own. But sometimes, an individual's sheer presence is enough to bend history to his will. One such individual was Alexander the Great. Through his conviction, vision, mental...

The idea that Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE), the famous last queen of ancient Egypt, owed her powerful position to her beauty persists. “The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have changed,” the French...