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Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was a Spanish conquistador who led the conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico from 1519. Taking the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, Cortés plundered Mesoamerica as he became the first ruler of the new colony...

Pre-Colonial North America (also known as Pre-Columbian, Prehistoric, and Precontact) is the period between the migration of the Paleo-Indians to the region between 40,000-14,000 years ago and contact between indigenous tribes and European...

The Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) refers to a period when robbery on the high seas and at colonial ports reached an unprecedented level. Although not all historians agree on the precise time frame, it is generally applied to those pirates...

Prince Henry the Navigator (aka Infante Dom Henrique, 1394-1460) was a Portuguese prince who famously helped capture the North African city of Ceuta, sponsored voyages of exploration with the aim of building colonies in the North Atlantic...

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...

James I of England (r. 1603-1625), who was also James VI of Scotland (r. 1567-1625), was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and he unified the thrones of Scotland and England following the death of Queen Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603...

With a wealth of natural resources, Brazil was by far the most important colony in the Portuguese empire and was, at one time or another, the world’s leading producer of sugar, diamonds, and tobacco. Colonised from the 1530s, most settlements...

The Plymouth Colony (1620-1691) was the first English settlement in the region of modern-day New England in the United States, settled by the religious Separatists known as the “pilgrims” who crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower in...

The conquistadors, meaning "conquerors", were Iberian military adventurers who operated as the vanguard of empires in the 15th and 16th centuries by exploring areas of the world unknown to Europeans, defeating indigenous armies, and then...

Blackbeard (d. 1718), otherwise known as Edward Teach (probably an assumed name), was an infamous English pirate who operated in the Caribbean and Atlantic during a surprisingly short career lasting just 15 months. With his long black beard...