When the Olympic Games included competitions in architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, and music

Jean Jacoby was a Luxembourgish painter; Alex Diggelmann, a Swiss poster artist; the Danish Josef Petersen was a writer; the…

Celestine V, the pope who resigned and was imprisoned in a castle for the rest of his life

Times have changed, and social evolution makes it possible that, if in the past access to the throne of St.…

The oldest surviving text of Latin prose is a manual of agriculture and recipes, including the placenta cake

As we mentioned in a previous article, only one percent of all the literature produced by the Romans in Antiquity…

Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli’s model for his Renaissance prince and alleged inspiration for Leonardo’s face of Christ

Cesare Borgia, commonly known as the Duke of Valentinois, gained his state through his father’s fortune, and lost it with…

When it became fashionable in England to have a hermit living in the garden

How did the tradition of garden gnomes begin? Who came up with the idea of decorating the green area of…

The chemical process invented to manufacture explosives that today feeds one-third of the world’s population

If I review the term Haber Process and accompany it with descriptive words such as industry, ammonia, nitrogen, fertilizer, and…

Christian Heinrich Heineken, the child prodigy who impressed Europe at just four years old

It is surprising that centuries ago, in times when access to education was practically restricted to the elites and pedagogy…

How a Hawaiian prince became the only congressman with royal blood in the U.S.A.

Some time ago we saw how Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Charles Joseph, grew up in the U.S. with his mother (who…

A single family remains in the Erbil citadel, the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world

The Near and Middle East are full of cities of proven antiquity, such as Byblos, Sidon, Jericho, Susa… Less well…

When Choctaws gave everything they owned to help the Irish during the Great Famine of 1847

Ireland is a highly appreciated destination for a certain sector of travelers seeking something different from the classic sun and…