The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists–half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs–had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on NovemberContinue Reading
A new dig in Mexico reveals the grisly fate of 550 people seized in 1520 by the Acolhua, allies of the Aztec and enemies of Spain. The son of minor Spanish nobility, Hernán Cortés sailed for the New World at age 19, in 1504. After spending several years in HispaniolaContinue Reading
A trusted member of the Byzantine establishment, Procopius was the Empire’s official chronicler, and his “History of the Wars of Justinian” proclaimed the strength and wisdom of the Emperor’s reign. Yet all the while the dutiful scribe was working on a very different – and dangerous – history to beContinue Reading
Also called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion – first great popular rebellion in English history. Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax of 1381, which brought to a head the economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the century. The rebellion drew support from severalContinue Reading
The Beagle sailed from Plymouth Sound on 27 December 1831 under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy. While the expedition was originally planned to last two years, it lasted almost five—Beagle did not return until 2 October 1836. Darwin spent most of this time exploring on land (three years andContinue Reading
August 24, 79 AD: “Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii, Italy, begins to erupt in the year 79; within the next 25 hours, it wipes out the entire town. Hundreds of years later, archaeologists excavated Pompeii and found everything and everyone that had been there that day perfectly preserved by the volcano’sContinue Reading
Indulgences became increasingly popular in the Middle Ages as a reward for displaying piety and doing good deeds, though, doctrinally speaking, the Catholic Church stated that the indulgence was only valid for temporal punishment for sins already forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession. The faithful asked that indulgences be givenContinue Reading
In 1405 a Chinese admiral, Zheng He, set sail with an enormous fleet of ships carrying more than 27,000 people. This was the first of seven voyages of discovery which took Zheng and his ships all over the known world, from India to the Gulf of Persia and as farContinue Reading
The splendidly named Cloudesley Shovell came from a prosperous Norwich family. Cloudesley was his maternal grandmother’s surname. His family had useful naval connections and he was already at sea as a cabin-boy in his early teens. At seventeen he became a midshipman on the Royal Prince, the flagship of the DukeContinue Reading
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