Girolamo Frescobaldi was a major composer from the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods whose keyboard works rank among the most important of his time. His sacred and secular vocal music is generally assessed to be less important but...

Quevedo was a Spanish satirist, novelist and poet and one of the great writers of the Spanish Golden Age. His Los sueños is a brilliant and bitterly satiric account of the inhabitants of hell. Other major works include the philosophical tre...

Sir Thomas Cavendish was an English explorer and a privateer known as "The Navigator" because he was the first who deliberately tried to emulate Sir Francis Drake and raid the Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and return by circumnavig...

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was a Dutch statesman, who played an important role in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain. In 1586, Van Oldenbarnevelt was made Land's Advocate of the province of Holland, an office he held for 32 ye...

Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death on 24 March 1603. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last monarch of the House of Tudor. Elizabeth was the...

Ivan IV Vasilyevich, commonly known as Ivan the Terrible, was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and Tsar of All the Russias from 1547 until his death. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siber...

Anne of Cleves was Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Anne was from the small north German state of Cleves. Her brother, William, ruled Cleves but realised that his sister's marriage to the king of England would greatly enhance his status. After...

Mary of Austria, also known as Mary of Hungary, was queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia as the wife of King Louis II, and she was later Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. The daughter of Queen Joanna of Castile and King Philip I of C...

Francis I of France, called the Father and Restorer of Letters, was crowned King of France in 1515 in the cathedral at Reims and reigned until 1547. Francis I is considered to be France's first Renaissance monarch. His reign saw France make...

Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba was a Spanish general in the service of the reign, when it was rising to military pre-eminence. He was called El Gran Capitán ("The Great Captain") by contemporaries and "the Father of Trench Warfare" by some. G...

Frederick III of Habsburg was elected as German King as the successor of Albert II in 1440. Born in Innsbruck, he was the son of Duke Ernest the Iron from the Leopoldinian line of the Habsburg family ruling Inner Austria, i.e. Styria, Carin...

Louis VIII the Lion reigned as King of France from 1223 to 1226. He was a member of the House of Capet. Louis VIII was born in Paris, France, the son of Philip II Augustus and Isabelle of Hainaut. He was also Count of Artois, inheriting the...

Richard I was King of England from 6 July 1189 until his death. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the...

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...

Charles Martel also known as Charles the Hammer, was a Frankish military and political leader, who served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian kings and ruled de facto during an interregnum (737–43) at the end of his life, using the...