History in Brief

A devastating end to an ancient city, and the most perfect time capsule for our modern age.

The man in green. The legend of Sherwood Forest. A story and a figure who is ever-changing, yet remains constant in English mythology.

When pushing someone out of a window leads to a continental conflagration...

The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years, physical manifestation of the division between the USSR and the West. Its fall paved the way for German reunification, and dramatically signaled the peaceful end of the Cold War.

Today, let's take a brief look at the man from a nomadic tribe on the Mongolian steppe who created the largest contiguous land empire in history.

When he died in 1727, Sir Isaac Newton was buried with full honors in Westminster Abbey. His theories stood unchallenged for over 200 years and even today, whenever an engineer launches a rocket or a physicist solves a problem of motion, they are using the foundation laid down by this quiet, prickly genius who changed the world.

Arguably the most consequential figure in Roman history, Augustus took the Roman Republic and turned it into an Empire, all while telling everyone he was actually bringing the Republic back.

A man trapped in a failing body, yet whose mind explored the boundaries of space and time. Stephen Hawking was a groundbreaking theoretical physicist, a cosmologist who transformed our understanding of black holes and the origins of the universe, and a global icon.

Born Augusta Ada Byron, Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of the famously tumultuous Romantic poet, Lord Byron. But while her father wrote verses, Ada would go on to write something far more structured and groundbreaking: the world's very first computer program.

The word "Renaissance" literally means "rebirth" in French, and that's exactly what it was: a rebirth of classical learning, culture, and values from ancient Greece and Rome. It was a European golden age that produced some of the most famous art and brilliant minds in history. It shifted the way people saw themselves and their place in the world, and it laid the foundation for the modern era.