In the heart of the dense Amazonian jungle, researchers are realizing that what was long believed to be an untouched wilderness is anything but. Recent archeological discoveries indicate that the rainforest’s native populations spent centuries modifying and transforming the natural landscape. The so-called city-forest theory challenges traditional views of human-nature dynamics in the Amazon, […]

Samuel Johnson was an English author and lexicographer who lived between the years of 1709 and 1784. He is best remembered by literary historians for his famous Dictionary. This dictionary, formally known as A Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1755 and apparently made him worthy of becoming known widely—unofficially—as Doctor Johnson. […]

An iconic Renaissance image has inspired a cutting-edge contemporary sculpture. The British Museum in London partnered with Asprey Studio’s Kent-based workshop to design hand-sculpted sterling silver rhinoceroses—each with its own digital component—inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s famous zoological drawing.   “It is exciting and fascinating to see the work from the master craftspeople of Asprey […]

In the USSR during Stalin’s regime, show trials were a tool of political repression. The trials were orchestrated events that coerced confessions out of innocent people. The end was to consolidate Stalin’s power by removing any potential rivals. The Great Purge of the 1930s was the most brutal political cleansing event in which up […]

At the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, two major powers vied for the Mediterranean. In the west, the Romans had recently defeated the Carthaginians and, having crossed to Greece, the Macedonians. Concurrently, Antiochus III (223-187BCE), king of the Seleucid Empire, earned the title “the Great” by re-establishing Seleucid power in Asia Minor, seizing […]