History

By the age of 32, Alexander the Great had conquered an empire that stretched from the Balkans to modern-day Pakistan, making him the sovereign of one of the largest empires in the ancient world. Despite his success and fame, it’s impossible to pay respects to him today, as the location of his final resting place […]

There are some historical mysteries that may never be solved, from the date that Jesus was born to the identity of Jack the Ripper to the location of Cleopatra’s tomb. Sometimes, that’s because the relevant excavated material has been lost or an archaeological site has been destroyed. Other times, it’s because new evidence is unlikely to come forward […]

The human family tree is a tangle of twisted branches. Parting the foliage to disentangle the stem of our own species is not so easy. The classic out-of-Africa hypothesis suggests that Homo sapiens evolved from a distinct lineage of early human that arose around 150,000 years ago before setting off to spread through Europe and […]

The story of Clotilda is one of the most intriguing and emotional sagas in American history. Clotilda was a slave ship that brought over 100 Africans to the United States illegally in 1860, long after the transatlantic slave trade had been abolished. The ship was thought to have been lost to history until recently when […]

Famous painters like Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and other Renaissance masters may have experimented with mixing egg yolk into their oil paint to help the paintings withstand humidity and to prevent wrinkling and yellowing, scientists have found. Research into the painting habits of the master painters “might improve the preservation of invaluable artworks,” a […]

For him, it was all or nothing. Win or lose everything, wring out your vital force to the end to reach the heights of ambition, otherwise what is the point of living as a second lieutenant. In Napoleon facing death (L’Archipel), the historian Alain Frerejean looks back on this fearless knight, who came close to […]

An old adage states that Rome wasn’t built in a day, meaning that big projects take time to complete. The Roman Empire, as an example, was established gradually and grew over hundreds of years from a city-state to a colossal empire stretching from Britain to Egypt. And just as Rome and its empire wasn’t built […]

Mwili, Akili na Roho (Body, Mind and Spirit) – on in Nairobi, Kenya – is a major international exhibition presenting east African painters who are key players in the modernist art of the region. Modernism in the fine arts refers to a period of experimentation from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s, a break […]