Cuba: Did you mean...?

Mary Read, sometimes spelt Reade (b. c. 1690), was an infamous pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1720) active in the Bahamas until her capture by the Jamaican authorities in 1720. As a crew member of the English pirate John...

Captain Charles Vane was an English pirate active in the Caribbean and off the east coast of North America between 1716 and 1720. The pirate, who infamously refused a pardon and instead fired his cannons at the ship of Governor Woodes...

Captain Benjamin Hornigold was a British pirate active in the Caribbean and North Atlantic from 1716 to 1717. Hornigold’s greatest claim to fame (or infamy) is that he taught the pirating ropes to Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard...

Cochineal is a brilliant red dye extracted from the crushed bodies of parasitic insects which prey on cacti in the warmer parts of the Americas. The dye was an important part of trade in ancient Mesoamerica and South America and throughout...

François L'Olonais (also spelt L'Olonnais or L'Ollonais, c. 1630-1668), real name Jean-David Nau, was a French buccaneer and pirate who operated from Tortuga on Hispaniola. In 1667, he famously attacked Venezuela, then part...

Adelantado was an office awarded by the Spanish Crown to conduct military campaigns in the medieval period but then repurposed during the Age of Exploration to grant an individual the right to privately fund expeditions of discovery...

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was the leading French composer of Romantic music, best known for his innovative Symphonie fantastique and use of large-scale orchestras and choruses in works like The Trojans opera. Berlioz's innovative...

Death of Capt. Ferrer, the Captain of the Amistad, July 1839, color engraving and frontispiece from John Warner Barber (1840). A History of the Amistad Captives. New Haven, Connecticut: E.L. and J.W. Barber, Hitchcock & Stafford...

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was a global conflict fought between the great powers of Europe in the mid-18th century. The culmination of several decades of conflict, it was caused both by colonial rivalries...

The history of tobacco use in the Americas goes back over 1,000 years when natives of the region chewed or smoked the leaves of the plant now known as Nicotiana rustica (primarily in the north) and Nicotiana...