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Francisco Pizarro (c. 1478-1541) was a conquistador who led the Spanish conquest of the Inca civilization from 1532. With only a small group of men, Pizarro took advantage of his superior weapons and the fact that the Incas were...

Kilwa, an island located off the coast of East Africa in modern-day southern Tanzania, was the most southern of the major Swahili Coast trading cities that dominated goods coming into and out of Africa from and to Arabia, Persia, and...

Zheng Yi (also Cheng I, Ching Yih, Cheng Yao-I, Cheng Wen-Hsien, or Cheng Yud) was a Chinese pirate who lived from 1765 to 1807. Operating in the South China Sea, Zheng Yi famously led a 600-ship pirate confederation. This force of...

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596 CE) was an English mariner, privateer and explorer who in 1588 CE helped defeat the Spanish Armada of Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598 CE) which attempted to invade the kingdom of Elizabeth I of England...

John Paul Jones (1747-1792) was a Scottish-born sailor who served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). His raid on the English port town of Whitehaven in 1778 and his victory over the HMS...

Iphigenia in Aulis (or at Aulis) was written by Euripides, the youngest and most popular of the trilogy of great Greek tragedians. The play was based on the well-known myth surrounding the sacrifice of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's...

Military supremacy of the seas could be a crucial factor in the success of any land campaign, and the Romans well knew that a powerful naval fleet could supply troops and equipment to where they were most needed in as short...

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was a 19th-century American author of novels, short stories and poetry. He is best known for his novel Moby Dick, published in 1851, and his short stories Bartleby the Scrivner and Billy Budd, Sailor...

The play Philoctetes was written by one of the greatest of the Greek tragedy playwrights, Sophocles, in 409 BCE. Philoctetes is one of his surviving plays whose exact production date can be determined and is set in the final year...

The Foundation Decree of Cyrene (c. 322 BCE) is a covenant between the citizens of Cyrene in North Africa in the 4th century BCE and those of their mother-state of Thera granting any who wish to become Cyrenean citizens...