Philosophers often find it useful to narrate a hypothetical conversation or confrontation between individuals to illustrate a theoretical idea. Plato’s famous Socratic dialogues are an example of this. Similarly, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s master-slave dialectic tells the story of a confrontation between two self-conscious individuals that results in a fight to the death. Understanding […]

The history of Roman coins goes deep into the past, with the first true Roman coins introduced at the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. By the end of the 3rd century BCE, the silver denarius was first introduced, and it remained the dominant coin in the Roman world for the next four centuries. […]

The Flight of the Earls took place on September 4, 1607 when three prominent Gaelic noble families,those of Hugh O’Neill, Rory O’Donnell, and the Maguire clan, fled Ireland to escape feared arrest and seek Spanish assistance for resumption of hostilities against the British Crown. It is seen as the swansong for the Gaelic nobility […]

Princess Alexandra led a privileged childhood in the German Empire, close to her cousins in the British royal family. Her charmed upbringing led to a teenage romance with the future tsar of Russia, Nicholas Romanov. She became the empress of the Russian Empire when her husband rose to power in 1894, but she would […]

The early modern period is often cited as a military revolution. Though some scholars describe an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process, it is undeniable that European battlefields of the 16th and 17th centuries witnessed major changes in tactics and equipment. The supremacy of cavalry was finally ended by infantry advances. Artillery, siegecraft, and […]