Images

The Akkadian Empire (c. 2334–2218 BCE), founded by Sargon of Akkad (reign c. 2334–2279 BCE), is widely regarded as the first territorial empire in recorded history. Emerging from...

Portrait of Frederick William II of Prussia, print by Johan Frederick Clemens, London, 1793. Nephew of Frederick the Great, King Frederick William II ruled Prussia from 1786 until his death in 1797. Often overlooked...

Idealized depiction of Frederick the Great of Prussia, painting by Wilhelm Camphausen, Germany, 1870. This painting is a dramatized version of Frederick the Great painted almost a century after his death. The idealized...

Flag of the World Health Organization, a specialized branch of the United Nations.

A c. 1910 painting by Ernest Board showing the English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823), the vaccine pioneer, administering a vaccination against cowpox to James Phipps in 1796, which subsequently protected...

Maria Theresa of Austria and her family, oil on canvas by Martin van Meytens, c. 1754. Those depicted include Maria Theresa (right, seated) her husband Francis I (left, seated), a young Joseph II (center, standing next...

An illustration by Richard Caton Woodville Jr. showing an attack by the Ndebele of Matabeleland on Europeans invading the kingdom during the First Matabele War (1893-4).

The Rhodes Colossus, Striding from Cape Town to Cairo, cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne from Punch magazine, 10 December 1892. The image shows the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) astride Africa in illustration...

An 1836 painting by William Cornwallis Harris showing a kraal (village and cattle enclosure) of the Ndebele people who founded Matabeleland in Southern Africa (1838-97).

A photograph dating to the late-19th or early-20th century showing Ndebele women and children and traditional huts at Bulawayo, once the capital of Matabeleland. Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress.