Definitions

The Gestapo was the secret political police organisation of Nazi Germany. Created in 1933, the Gestapo became one of the most feared instruments of state terror, its members having few or no legal restrictions to their actions. The Gestapo...

Dreamtime (The Dreaming) is the English term used to describe the mythology and spirituality of Indigenous Australians. It is a philosophy, worldview, cosmology, and way of life that explains how the world was created. Although people often...

Einsatzgruppen ('deployment groups') were secret Nazi killing units, who systematically sought out and murdered civilians identified as enemies of the Third Reich. Operating without any legal restrictions in territories newly conquered by...

The Mountain Meadows Massacre (11 September 1857) was a conflict between the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and the wagon train of the Baker-Fancher party, who were traveling through Utah to California, resulting in...

Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), a lieutenant-colonel in the Nazi SS, was responsible for organising the transportation of Jewish people and other victims of Nazism to concentration, labour, and death camps. Eichmann played a key role in the Holocaust...

The Peace of Westphalia, the name given to the multiple treaties, marked the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War. Signed on 24 October 1648, it aimed to secure political autonomy for the multitude of small states that made up the Holy Roman...

The Nuremberg trials (1945-6), held in Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Germany, were a series of trials involving the senior surviving Nazis to hold them accountable for waging war and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Second...

Yamm (from the Semitic word yam for 'sea', also known as Yam and Yam-Nahar) was the god of the sea and storm in the pantheon of the Canaanite-Phoenicians. Depicted consistently as tyrannical, angry, violent, and harsh, Yamm was the brother...

Britomartis, also known as Diktynna (Dictynna), was the Cretan goddess of hunting and fishing nets in Greek mythology. Although referred to as a nymph and worshipped locally, she had at least two significant and active shrines, one in Crete...

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. Despite his...