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Girona in Catalonia, Spain, is an experience in polarities, capturing the romance of Paris but also a tinge of foreboding prevalent in Moscow. Girona is both a very popular modern destination and an...
The year 1843, was to mark a turning point in how the British – and eventually much of the wider world – celebrated Christmas. Not only was it the year in which Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas...
Ancient megalithic sites all over the world are still visited in celebration of winter solstice , to welcome the sunrise on the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. From Newgrange in...
Once upon a time, Zeus spent nine consecutive nights sleeping with Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory. These passionate nights gave birth to the nine Muses. The Muses are Erato, Euterpe,...
“ Every word of it is true,” declares Plato in his Timaeus regarding the existence of Atlantis. Something in excess of 20,000 books have been published on the topic of Atlantis. Mainstream academia...
The assassination of Emperor Valentinian III in March 455 AD, heralded the last phase of the Western Roman Empire’s political existence. By then, large parts of its territory were either occupied by...
Some lost treasures do not consist of gold, silver, or precious gems, yet their value exceeds monetary reckoning. Some even consider these lost treasures priceless, and a few seem to be cursed,...
Deep in the eastern Pyrenean valleys of Catalonia, Spain, lies a 900-year-old mystery. For some unknown reason, in the 12th century (between 1100-1170) at least nine medieval church apses were...
On July 24, 1715, a convoy of 11 Spanish ships and one French merchantman set sail from Havana, Cuba to Spain. It was called a “Plate Fleet” because their cargo consisted of valuable treasure looted...
Women’s wills which so miraculously have survived from late Anglo-Saxon times deliver some surprising bequests such as the enslaved, which is shocking, but they mirror the societal values which...
Perseus is one of the greatest heroes of Greek tradition, venerated as a demigod. But is Perseus really of Greek origin or was his legend brought from elsewhere to Greece? According to the Greek...
Heracles, born of the mortal woman Alcmene by Zeus, King of the Gods, is the greatest of the Greek heroes, yet he was not fated to an everlasting happy love life, until after his death. His...
The Victorian essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle wrote, “ No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men .” Carlyle died half a century before women in...
In 376 AD, an alarming number of Visigoths erupted on the Danube frontier and overflowed into the northern Roman provinces of the Balkans. The recent arrival of a new invader in Eastern Europe,...
The ruins of Hatra, located 290 kilometers (180 miles) northwest of modern Baghdad, tell the story of a second century AD Kingdom, whose rulers walked hand-in-hand with the reigning Arsacid Dynasty...
In January 1077 a king came to the mountain fortress of Canossa in northern Italy to beg forgiveness from a Pope. In September 1141 two rival armies surrounded Winchester in southern England as...
Anglo-Saxon England was a wealthy world with a gold and silver coinage from the early 600s, beginning in Kent and East Anglia. It had been pagan in the 400s but by the ninth and tenth century it was...
When Europe was experiencing the so-called dark Middle Ages, during the seventh and eighth centuries AD, in the East, Islam was on the rise, and the Umayyad Dynasty was on the forefront of conquering...
“ Every man can tell how many goats and sheep he possesses but not how many friends ”. Marcus Tullius Cicero Titus Pomponius was neutral both in character and in policy. Perhaps this was his natural...
About 1,800 years ago, a group of people migrating from an unknown northern location began to settle in what is now called the Valley of Mexico. They are called Aztec, a name derived from the word...
The Abbasid Dynasty, founded by Abu al-Abbas as-Saffah in 750 AD, marked a significant transition in the Islamic world. It succeeded the Umayyad Caliphate and shifted the Islamic capital from...
When Roman General Diocletian was designated Emperor by his army in 284, he followed suit of many General-Emperors before him and engaged in war against the legitimate Emperor in place in order to...
To the ancient Greeks, philosophy – literally the love of wisdom - as a therapy or treatment of bodily ailments implied a holistic, psychosomatic understanding of the human mind, body and soul...
On the banks of the Tigris river, not far from the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala rivers, about 35 kilometers (21 miles) southeast of Baghdad, lie the ruins of two ancient cities, who once...
