Genius: Did you mean...?

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was an English composer best known for his orchestral music and oratorios. Amongst Elgar's most-loved works are his Pomp and Circumstance marches which inspired the choral Land of Hope and Glory, a rousing...

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...

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...

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 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...

The Battle of Belmont (7 November 1861) was an engagement fought during the American Civil War in Mississippi County, Missouri. It was the first combat command of Union Brigadier General Ulysses S...

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...

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...

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...

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...