Definitions

The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Jewish scriptures and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Genesis takes its name from the opening line in Hebrew – beresit, ("in the beginning") – later translated into Greek as genesis ("origin"...

John Marshall (1755-1835) was an American lawyer and statesman, who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1801 until his death in 1835. Considered one of the most influential chief justices in US history...

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...