Genius: Did you mean...?

The Thames Tunnel was completed in 1843 and connects the two banks of the River Thames at Rotherhithe and Wapping in London. The 20-year project was masterminded by Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849) and was both the first tunnel to be built...

Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) was an Italian composer of around 40 operas, including the comic operas The Italian Girl in Algiers and The Barber of Seville. Rossini championed melody and beautiful singing over operatic drama, rattling out...

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was a British composer of Swedish origin most famous for his dramatic orchestral suite The Planets, first performed in public in 1919. Holst also composed several operas, wrote sacred choral works such as The Hymn...

Titus Andronicus is the earliest tragedy by William Shakespeare (l. c.1564-1616), probably written sometime between 1589 and 1593, and first performed in 1594. Infamous for its gratuitous violence and two-dimensional characters, Titus Andronicus...

Philolaus (l. c. 470 to c. 385 BCE) was a Pythagorean philosopher who claimed that fire was the first cause of existence and heat the underlying source of human life. He is best known for his pyrocentric model of the universe, which replaced...

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was an English composer best known for his orchestral music and oratorios. Amongst Elgar's most-loved works are his Pomp and Circumstance marches which inspired the choral Land of Hope and Glory, a rousing patriotic...

Helen is a Greek tragedy by Euripides (c. 484-407 BCE). It is usually thought to have first been performed at the Great Dionysia of 412 BCE and was part of the trilogy that included Euripides' lost Andromeda. Helen recounts an unusual version...

Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) was an American poet, playwright, and activist during the era of the American Revolution (1765-1789). Through her works of political satire, she advocated for the Patriot cause and became acquainted with several...

Phillis Wheatley (l. c. 1753-1784) was the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry and become recognized as a poet, overcoming the prevailing understanding of the time that a Black person was incapable of writing, much less...

Morning Star (Vooheheve, l. c. 1810-1883, better known as Dull Knife) was a Northern Cheyenne chief who led his people in resistance to the US government's policies of genocidal westward expansion. He participated in Red Cloud's War (1866-1868...