Polynesian navigation: Did you mean...?

Ptolemaic Egypt was a naval power that exerted influence throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from its foundation in 330 BCE until Cleopatra's defeat by Augustus at the Battle of Actium in 30 BCE. The Ptolemaic Kingdom produced some of the...

Sir Martin Frobisher (c. 1535-1594 CE) was an Elizabethan adventurer and explorer who embarked on three expeditions in the 1570s CE to chart the waters of the North American Arctic and find the Northwest Passage to Asia. Unsuccessful in these...

The Battle of Neerwinden saw the major defeat of a French republican army by an allied force of Austrians and Dutch during the War of the First Coalition (1792-97), part of the broader French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). The battle drove...

One of the most useful skills in early times was to be able to navigate using the stars. With this ability, sailors and explorers were able to venture through their lands and even discover new ones. Here's a little on how they did it...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-magellan-circumnavigated-the-globe-ewandro-magalhaes On September 6, 1522, the "Victoria" sailed into harbor in southern Spain. The battered vessel and its 18 sailors were all that remained...

Pirates have gained a reputation for wearing bright and distinctive clothing and accessories during the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) even if, in reality, most of what we think they wore comes from works of fiction like Robert Louis Stevenson’s...

Scythian women garnered leadership roles and a raised level of status in their day, which is perhaps without parallel until recent times. While many female figures rose to pivotal roles in history, their rise was not a reflection of systemic...

Piracy has involved many nationalities over the centuries, but one of the prominent groups in the medieval and early modern periods was the French pirates, who terrorised the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. French writers often...

The camel caravans which crossed the great dunes of the Sahara desert began in antiquity but reached their golden period from the 9th century CE onwards. In their heyday caravans consisted of thousands of camels travelling from North Africa...

In Norse mythology, the Sun and the Moon appear as personified siblings pulling the heavenly bodies and chased by wolves, or as plain objects. Written sources, such as the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, have surprisingly little to say about...