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The Scramble for Africa describes the competition between European imperial powers to first control trade and then territory in Africa in the final two decades of the 19th century. The reasons...

Pompeii was a large Roman town in Campania, Italy which was buried in volcanic ash following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Excavated in the 19th-20th century, its excellent state of preservation gives an invaluable insight into...

Xerxes I (l. 519-465, r. 486-465 BCE), also known as Xerxes the Great, was the king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. His official title was Shahanshah which, though usually translated as `emperor', actually means `king of kings'. He...

Chinampas are human-made islands built in shallow lakebeds that have fed the people of Mesoamerica and shaped local ecosystems for over a thousand years. Sometimes referred to as 'floating gardens,'...

The Great Game describes the rivalry between the British and Russian empires through the 19th century. The game was primarily concerned with the control of certain regions in Central Asia and the...

The Moche civilization (also known as the Mochica) flourished along the northern coast and valleys of ancient Peru, in particular, in the Chicama and Trujillo Valleys, between 1 CE and 800 CE. The Moche state spread to eventually...

Xanadu (aka Shangdu, Shang-tu, and Kaiping) located in Inner Mongolia, northern China, was first the capital (1263-73) and then the summer capital (1274-1364) of the Mongol Empire. It came to prominence during...

The Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK) was an elite German armoured unit that fought in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45). The Korps was initially led by Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) before he was promoted...

Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) was a German field marshal who gained fame as a tank commander in the Fall of France in 1940 and then as the commander of the Afrika Korps in North Africa, where he gained numerous victories. Known as the...

The Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368-1398 CE) was the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) which took over from the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1276-1368 CE) as the rulers of China. Born a peasant with the name Zhu Yuanzhang, the future...