Menno, Baron van Coehoorn was a Dutch soldier and military engineer of Swedish extraction. He made a number of influential weaponry innovations in siege warfare and fortification techniques. He was also known as the "Hollandish Vauban" (Hol...

Henry Sydney (or Sidney), 1st Earl of Romney. Henry entered Parliament in 1679 and, as a statesman, was one of the Immortal Seven (the author of the letter, in fact) to invite the Protestant William III of Orange to take the throne through...

Nicolaas or Nicolaes Witsen was mayor of Amsterdam thirteen times, between 1682-1706. In 1693 he became administrator of the VOC. In 1689 he was extraordinary-ambassador to the English court, and became Fellow of the Royal Society. In his f...

Directing his polemics against the pedantry of his time, Galileo, as his own popularizer, addressed his writings to contemporary laymen. His support of Copernican cosmology, against the Church's strong opposition, his development of a teles...

"Night Watch", 1642; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Night Watch is misnamed because of a very dark varnish that covered it until the 1940's. It should be titled The Company of Captain Frans Cocq. It is a group portrait of a company of civil gu...

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers). The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I ag...

Mehmed IV was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1648 to 1687. Taking the throne at age seven, his reign was significant as he changed the nature of the Sultan's position forever by giving up most of his executive power to his Grand Vizi...

Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific...

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and violinist. Born in the small Bohemian town of Wartenberg, Biber worked at Graz and Kromeriz before he illegally left his Kremsier employer (Prince-Bishop Carl Liechtenstein...

William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democrac...

Antonio Stradivari was an Italian luthier, a crafter of stringed instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Strad...

The Cretan War or War of Candia (Italian: Guerra di Candia), as the Sixth Ottoman–Venetian War is better known, was a conflict between the Republic of Venice and her allies (chief among them the Knights of Malta, the Papal States and France...

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz was a German mathematician and philosopher. He occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy. Leibniz developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and Leibniz's...

Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher and writer best known for his seminal work the Historical and Critical Dictionary, published beginning in 1695. Bayle was a self-pronounced Protestant and as a fideist he advocated a separation between...

Denis Papin was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine, and of the pressure cooker. In 1673, while working with Christiaan Huygens...