Pilgrims: Did you mean...?

Thomas Cromwell (l. c. 1485-1540 CE) served as chief minister to Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547 CE) from 1532 to 1540 CE. With his king and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer (in office 1533-55 CE), Cromwell masterminded the...

Apollo was a Greek god associated with the bow, music, and divination. The epitome of youth and beauty, source of life and healing, patron of the arts, and as bright and powerful as the sun itself, Apollo was perhaps the most loved of all...

The Ark of the Covenant refers to the box-like container that held the tablets of the Law received by Moses on Mount Sinai. Tradition claimed that it contained two stone tablets, carved by God, listing the first ten commandments given to...

Thoth is the Egyptian god of writing, magic, wisdom, and the moon. He was one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt alternately said to be self-created or born of the seed of Horus from the forehead of Set. As the son of these two deities...

Johannes Gutenberg (l. c. 1398-1468) was the inventor of the printing press (c. 1450) who seems to have developed the device from wine and oil presses of the time. Gutenberg’s printing press not only revolutionized book making but literally...

Suleiman the Magnificent (aka Süleyman I or Suleiman I, r. 1520-1566) was the tenth and longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Hailed as a skilled military commander, a just ruler, and a divinely anointed monarch during his lifetime...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage from...

For the Incas, as with many other ancient cultures, religion was inseparable from politics, history, and society in general. All facets of community life were closely connected to religious beliefs, from marriages to agriculture, government...

From around 800 BCE, ancient Greek city-states, most of which were maritime powers, began to look beyond Greece for land and resources. As a consequence, they founded colonies across the Mediterranean. Trade was usually the first step in...

Demeter was one of the oldest gods in the ancient Greek pantheon. Demeter was a goddess of agriculture and guaranteed the fertility of the earth. She protected both farming and vegetation. The close connection with the earth was inherited...