Maritime History: Did you mean...?

Bath, the famous spa town in Somerset England, has attracted people from near and far for centuries to its healing springs and baths. Today the city is known for its beautiful Georgian architecture and as the destination for the wealthy elite...

The spices clove, nutmeg, and mace originated on only a handful of tiny islands in the Indonesian archipelago but came to have a dramatic, far-reaching impact on world trade. In antiquity, they became popular in the medicines of India and...

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean on the northwest corner of the Barents Shelf. It is 800 kilometres (497 mi) north of mainland Norway and sits roughly midway between the top of Norway and the North Pole. It is bordered by Greenland...

The Solomonic Dynasty ruled Ethiopia from the 1270s to the 1970s, and the 14th-century work, the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of the Kings) famously tells of how the dynasty of Ethiopian kings descended from King Solomon himself. The descent from...

The foundation of the Assyrian dynasty can be traced to Zulilu, who is said to have lived after Bel-kap-kapu (c. 1900 BCE), the ancestor of Shalmaneser I. The city-state of Ashur rose to prominence in northern Mesopotamia, founding trade...

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...

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is today the Philippines...

The History Channel's Vikings (2013-present) is historical fiction drawing on characters and events from the Viking Age (c. 790 - c. 1100 CE) and focusing primarily on the legendary Viking leader Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons. Created and...

The rose that grows in many different forms in gardens all over the world today is an evolution of rose-like plants that lived in the northern hemisphere between 33 million and 23 million years ago. Traces of them have been found in the fossil...

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...