Definitions

The Description of Africa is the first comprehensive book about Africa, written by Leo Africanus, an African scholar trained in the Islamic intellectual tradition, in 1526, during the Italian Renaissance. A skillful mixture of anthropology...

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was an innovative Hungarian pianist and composer most famous for his classical works for piano and orchestra, string quartets, and songs, many of which present traditional Hungarian and other European folk themes...

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American journalist and poet, best known for his collection of poems entitled Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. He remains an influential figure in American literature, whose writings reflect how deeply...

The Acts of the Apostles is the story of how the movement that became Christianity began in Jerusalem and spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean cities of the Roman Empire. It was written by the same author as the third gospel, assigned...

The Roman imperial cult was the practice of venerating Roman emperors and their families as having divine attributes, honoring their contributions to the spread of Roman religion and culture. It was instituted by the first Roman emperor Augustus...

The Munich Agreement, signed on 30 September 1938 at the Munich Conference attended by the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany, handed over the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the hope that this act of appeasement would...

New Testament is the name for the second half of the Christian Bible, compiled from the 2nd century CE, after the separation of Christianity from Judaism. The Christian Bible retained books of the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, as...

The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) was a US military expedition of exploration, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whose goal was to explore the newly acquired western lands that comprised the Louisiana Purchase and to reach...

The Battle of the Little Bighorn (25-26 June 1876) is the most famous engagement of the Great Sioux War (1876-1877). Five divisions of the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer (l. 1839-1876) were wiped out in one day by the...

Dolley Madison (1768-1849), born Dolley Payne, was a prominent American First Lady, a function she held both during the presidency of her husband, James Madison, and for his predecessor, the widower Thomas Jefferson. Known for her elegance...