Negative confession: Did you mean...?

John Wesley Cromwell (l. 1846-1927) was an African American civil rights activist, educator, historian, journalist, and lawyer who wrote extensively on slave revolts, especially Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831. Drawing on primary sources...

Passover is a Jewish festival celebrated since at least the 5th century BCE, typically associated with the tradition of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. According to historical evidence and modern-day practice, the festival was...

The Papyrus of Ani, a text of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, was prepared for the priest Ani of Thebes (c. 1250 BCE) and included among the grave goods of his tomb. It includes a number of chapters from the Book of the Dead.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Swiss philosopher whose work both praised and criticised the Enlightenment movement. Although a believer in the power of reason, science, and the arts, Rousseau was convinced that a flourishing culture...

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher who famously summarised his pessimistic view of human nature in his greatest work, Leviathan, published in 1651. Hobbes believed that the life of humanity in the state of nature is short...

A belief in an afterlife was central to every major civilization of the ancient world and this encouraged the recognition of the reality of ghosts as the spirits of the departed who, for one reason or another, either returned from the realm...

Loki is a god in Norse mythology who is often simply described as the 'trickster' god for his love of playing pranks on both his fellow gods and his or their opponents. Sworn brother of Odin and often the one to dig the other gods out of...

The Continental System was a major blockade of British trade imposed by French Emperor Napoleon I from 21 November 1806 to 11 April 1814. It was designed to cripple the British economy, thereby forcing Britain out of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815...

The Salem Witch Trials were a series of legal proceedings in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-1693 resulting in the deaths of 20 innocent people accused of witchcraft and the vilification of over 200 others based, initially, on the reports of...

The Eighty Years' War (1568-1648, also known as The Dutch Revolt and Dutch War of Independence) was a military conflict between the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands and Spain, which then governed them, beginning in the reign of King...