Sei Shonagon (lesser councilor of state Sei), was a Japanese author, poet and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book. Shonagon is also...

Emperor Zhenzong was the third emperor of the Song Dynasty of China. His personal name was Zhao Heng. He reigned from 997 to 1022. Zhenzong was the son of Emperor Taizong. His temple name means "True Ancestor". Zhenzong's reign was noted...

Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer known to be the first European to have landed in North America (presumably in Newfoundland, Canada). It is believed that Leif was born about 970 in Iceland, the son of Erik the Red, a Norwegian explorer and...

Abu Rayhan Biruni was a Persian mathematician, physicist, scholar, encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, traveller, historian, pharmacist, and teacher, who contributed greatly to the fields of mathematics, philosophy, medicine...

Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki) (c.978–c.1014 or 1025) was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about...

Avicenna is the Latinate form of Ibn-Sina. He was a Persian polymath regarded both in Europe and the Middle East as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. He is known to have written around 450 works acr...

Tancred of Hauteville was an eleventh-century Norman petty lord about whom little is known. His historical importance comes entirely from the accomplishments of his sons and later descendants. He was a minor noble near Coutances in the Cote...

Guido of Arezzo (991/992 – after 1033) was a music theorist of the Medieval era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation (staff notation) that replaced neumatic notation; his text, the Micrologus, was the second-most-widel...

Edward the Confessor, also known as Saint Edward the Confessor, was among the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, and usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066. The son of Æthelred the Unready and E...

Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, known in English as Macbeth, was King of Scots (or Alba) from 1040 until his death. He is best known as the subject of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and the many works it has inspired, although the play is...

Harald Sigurdsson, given the epithet Hardrada (roughly translated as "stern counsel" or "hard ruler") in the sagas, was King of Norway (as Harald III) from 1046 to 1066. In addition, he unsuccessfully claimed the Danish throne until 1064 an...

Casimir I the Restorer was a Duke of Poland of the Piast dynasty and the de jure monarch of the entire country from 1034 until his death. He was the only son of Mieszko II Lambert by his wife Richeza, daughter of Count Palatine Ezzo of L...

Harold Godwinson, often called Harold II, was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. Harold reigned from 6 January 1066 until his death at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October, fighting the Norman invaders led by William the Conqueror during...

William I usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman King of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087. The descendant of Viking raiders, he had been Duke of Normandy since 1035...

Alp Arslan was the second Sultan of the Seljuq Empire and great-grandson of Seljuq, the eponymous founder of the dynasty. His real name was Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri, and for his military prowess, personal valour, and fighting skills he ob...