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Oracle Bones
Oracle Bones (also known as Dragon's Bones) were the shoulder blades of oxen or plastrons of turtles (the flat underside of the turtle's shell) which were used in the Shang Dynasty of China (c. 1600-1046 BCE) for divination. The symbols carved...
Definition
Medieval Trades
Medieval trades were essential to the daily welfare of the community and those who learned a skill through apprenticeship could make a higher and more regular income than farmers or soldiers. Professionals like millers, blacksmiths, masons...
Definition
Bimbisara
Bimbisara (c. 545/544 BCE - c. 493/492 BCE) was a king of the Magadha Kingdom who is credited with establishing imperial dominance in the Indian subcontinent. Son of a minor king called Bhattiya, he belonged to the Haryanka Dynasty, which...
Definition
Andreas Vesalius
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was the most celebrated anatomist in Europe during the 16th century and a key figure of the Scientific Revolution. Vesalius' great work was his On the Fabric of the Human Body, which contains over 250 remarkable...
Definition
Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) was an English navigator and hydrographer. He was the first person to map the coastal outline of Australia in 1801-1803, following his circumnavigation of the 7.692 million square kilometres (2.96 million square...
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Simon Forman
Simon Forman (1552-1611) was an Elizabethan physician, astrologer, magician, and alchemist who lived and worked in both London and Wiltshire, England. He was unusual in that despite receiving no formal training in medicine or astrology, and...
Article
Wreck of the Batavia
The Batavia was a Dutch East India Company ship that foundered on the coral reefs of the Houtman Albrolhos Islands, 60 kilometres (37 mi) off the coast of Western Australia, just before dawn on 4 June 1629. It was the flagship of a fleet...
Article
A Brief History of the Rose
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...
Article
Reforms of Catherine the Great
Catherine II of Russia (Catherine the Great) was the empress regent of Russia from 1762 to 1796. During the mid-18th century, Russia was still regarded as culturally behind compared to Western European countries. However, during her reign...
Article
Eyes on the East: Chronicles of the Indian Ocean Spice Trade
As the 15th century ended, Europeans were still mostly in the dark about the Eastern world. Early travelers like Marco Polo had given the West tidbits of information, but these accounts were too highly colored and fragmentary to provide a...