Government: Did you mean...?

The Sydney Harbour Bridge – affectionately known as The Coathanger by Australians – was opened to great fanfare and a touch of scandal on 19 March 1932 and was the longest steel arch bridge in the world at the time, with a span of 503 metres...

George Washington's Farewell Address was published in a Philadelphia newspaper on 19 September 1796, near the end of his second and final presidential term. In it, Washington explains his reasoning for not seeking a third term and warns his...

Montesquieu (1689-1757) was a French philosopher whose ideas in works like The Spirit of the Laws helped launch the Enlightenment movement in Europe. His ideas on the separation of powers, that is, between the executive, legislative, and...

The Third Intermediate Period (c. 1069-525 BCE) is the era following the New Kingdom of Egypt (c. 1570-c.1069 BCE) and preceding the Late Period (c.525-332 BCE). Egyptian history was divided into eras of 'kingdoms' and 'intermediate periods'...

The state of nature is an idea which became especially popular with certain philosophers during the Enlightenment, notably Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). It refers to a state of existence...

Citizenship is and always has been a valued possession of any individual. When one studies the majority of ancient empires one finds that the concept of citizenship, in any form, was non-existent. The people in these societies did not and...

The Byzantine Empire existed from 330 to 1453. It is often called the Eastern Roman Empire or simply Byzantium. The Byzantine capital was founded at Constantinople by Constantine I (r. 306-337). The Byzantine Empire varied in size over the...

The 4th century BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle once wrote in his essay Politics, “If liberty and equality…are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.” Regrettably...

Josef Mengele (1911-1979) was a Nazi doctor who performed horrific pseudo-scientific experiments on detainees in the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was a medical officer from 1943 to 1945. Thousands of Mengele's victims endured bizarre...

The Byzantine Emperor ruled as an absolute monarch in an institution which lasted from the 4th to 15th century CE. Aided by ministers, high-ranking nobility, and key church figures, the emperor (and sometimes empress) was commander-in-chief...