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The early first millennium BCE was a time of great change and turmoil in the Near East and Eastern Europe. Many of the Bronze Age empires had collapsed, but in their place came new ones in Assyria, Persia, and Babylon, as well as a rejuvenated Egypt. Other peoples also began to enter the historical record and assert themselves. In the wake of the Sea Peoples destruction in Anatolia, the Lydians and Phrygians established powerful kingdoms, and by the 8th century BCE the Greek city-states had formed and the Greeks began establishing colonies along the western coast of Anatolia.

During the 17th century, the Netherlands, despite having only 1.5 million people in 1600, became a global maritime and trading power. By contrast, France at the time had 20 million people, Spain had 8 million, and England had 5 million. Nevertheless, Amsterdam became one of the most important urban centers in the world.

Scipio Africanus: The Life and Legacy of the Roman General Who Defeated Hannibal During the Second Punic War chronicles how Scipio rose to prominence, his legendary victory at Zama, and the legacy he had on antiquity.

After the last shots of World War II were fired and the process of rebuilding Germany and Europe began, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union each tried to obtain the services of the Third Reich's leading scientists, especially those involved in rocketry, missile technology, and aerospace research. Naturally, this was a delicate affair due to the fact many of the German scientists were not only active Nazis, but had helped the Nazi war machine terrorize the world.

It is rare to find a single battle that is truly decisive in shaping the course of subsequent history, but occasionally, a battle becomes pivotal in retrospect, defining and shaping what comes after it. The Battle of Zama, which pitted the army of the Roman Republic against the forces of Carthage on the plains of North Africa, was one such battle, and it featured two of history’s greatest generals on opposing sides.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is known around the world as the “Father of Psychoanalysis,” and for good reason. If anything, Freud’s first patient was himself. A sufferer of psychosomatic symptoms, Freud diagnosed himself as having a repressed antagonism against his father. From there, Freud began to build on his now famous concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression. And of course, there’s his famous theory on the structure of the mind, which has made Id and Ego a commonly used part of the English lexicon.

At one point in antiquity, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen, but aside from its role in the Greco-Persian Wars and its collapse at the hands of Alexander the Great, it has been mostly overlooked. When it has been studied, the historical sources have mostly been Greek, the very people the Persians sought to conquer. Needless to say, their versions were biased.

Lying in the middle of a plain in modern day Iran is a forgotten ancient city: Persepolis. Built 2,500 years ago, it was known in its day as the richest city under the sun. Persepolis was the capital of Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire the world had ever seen, but after its destruction, it was largely forgotten for nearly 2,000 years, and the lives and achievements of those who built it were almost entirely erased from history.

Between the 18th and early 19th centuries, the West experienced massive leaps in technological, scientific, and economical advancement. This powerful period has since been immortalized as the great Industrial Revolution. With Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin near the end of the 18th century. Able to more effectively separate the cotton fiber from seeds, Whitney’s cotton gin turned the cotton industry into one of the antebellum South’s biggest cash cows, and as a result, the region became even more dependent on slave labor than before.

Despite losing the 1948 War, Arab nations throughout the Middle East had still refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. After the Suez Crisis, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser envisioned creating a unified Arab world, commonly referred to as pan-Arabism. Nasser was the consummate pan-Arab leader in the 1960s, positioning himself as the leader of the Arab world through increasing incitement against Israel with rhetoric. Israel found itself in possession of more land after 1948 than envisioned by the U.N. Partition Plan.

During the Civil War, the eyes of the nation usually stayed fixed to the Eastern theater, but one of the bright spots in the West for the Confederacy was Irish immigrant Patrick Cleburne, whose successes earned him the nickname "Stonewall of the West". Where so many Confederates were failing, Cleburne's strategic tactics and bold defensive fighting earned him fame and recognition throughout the South, even leading Lee to call him "a meteor shining from a clouded sky."

It is the most fabled and storied journey in American history. From 1804-1806, the first expedition across the North American continent was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who had recently bought a vast swath of territory from France. Jefferson wasn't entirely sure of what he had bought, so he asked a team led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to traverse the continent until they reached the Pacific, studying everything from the ecology to geography along the way to get an understanding of the country's new region.

Naval combat underwent a significant metamorphosis during World War II. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan launched some of the most powerful battleships ever to sail the world's oceans, yet the conflict witnessed the emergence and triumph of the aircraft carrier as the 20th century's true monarch of the seas. Submarine warfare expanded and developed while aircraft technology and doctrine experienced several revolutionary changes due to the unforgiving demands of the new combat environment.

Carthage was one of the great ancient civilizations, and at its peak, the wealthy Carthaginian empire dominated the Mediterranean against the likes of Greece and Rome, with commercial enterprises and influence stretching from Spain to Turkey. In fact, at several points in history it had a very real chance of replacing the fledgling Roman Empire or the failing Greek poleis (city-states) altogether as master of the Mediterranean.

Bette Davis presided over Hollywood at a time in which the film industry was at its most influential. Every actress, from Katharine Hepburn to Ingrid Bergman and Ginger Rodgers, themselves now considered among Hollywood's greatest icons, lived in the shadow of Bette Davis.

In the 1960s, the most popular actor in the world was Richard Burton, a hard-drinking Welshman who was nevertheless so professional that he was one of the preeminent stage performers of his day. In fact, he performed Shakespeare so magnificently that he was compared to British legend Laurence Olivier, and that success ultimately led to a film career that earned him seven Academy Award nominations, as well as BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for Best Actor.

One of the most notorious crimes during the Civil Rights Movement was the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi in June 1964. Occurring less than two weeks before the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the young volunteers were killed because they had come south to help register blacks to vote, a right they had been unfairly denied for over half a century thanks to Jim Crow. The shocking nature of the crimes galvanized people and helped bring about the kinds of changes the murderers sought to prevent.

In the 1940s, there were few actors who personified the all-American look like Burt Lancaster, who set Hollywood ablaze quickly with performances in movies like The Killers, The Flame and the Arrow, and The Crimson Pirate. Indeed, his status as a heartthrob was cemented by 1953's From Here to Eternity, when he and Deborah Kerr shot a romantic scene on a Hawaiian beach that ensured the film's inclusion in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Romantic Films of the 20th century.

As it turned out, however, that was just the first phase in a critically acclaimed career that would span over 40 years. As Lancaster grew older, he wisely veered away from the early kinds of roles he had as a leading man and branched out into more distinguished roles that were also more challenging, earning him brand new levels of acclaim. In time, he would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Actor, including a win for Elmer Gantry (1960) when he was in his late 40s. By the time he was finished, the American Film Institute named him 19th on its list of the 50 best actors of the 20th century.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees?

In the West, Hinduism is a religion that everyone has heard of but one that few non-practitioners truly understand. Today it is widely regarded as one of the world’s great religions and considered the indigenous religion of India, with practices and beliefs stretching back thousands of years. Sri Krishna, believed to be the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, is without question one of the most popular and instantly recognizable deities within the Hindu pantheon, which encompasses hundreds of Puranic divine beings.