Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or simply Miguel Hidalgo, was a Mexican Catholic priest and a leader of the Mexican War of Independence. As a priest, Hidalgo served in a church in Dolores, Mexico. After his arrival, he was shocked by the p...

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived an...

Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein was a Dutch Christian minister of Ghanaian birth who was one of the first known sub-Saharan Africans to study at a European university and one of the first Africans to be ordained as a minister in the Dutch R...

Pope Clement XIV, born Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, reigned from 19 May 1769 to his death in 1774. At the time of his election, he was the only Franciscan friar in the College of Cardinals. He is the last pope to take the name "Cle...

John Wesley was an 18th-century Anglican clergyman and Christian theologian who was an early leader in the Methodist movement. Methodism had three rises, the first at Oxford University with the founding of the so-called "Holy Club", the sec...

Pope Clement XIII, born Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico, was Pope from 16 July 1758 to his death in 1769. His pontificate was overshadowed by the pressure to suppress the Jesuits. He proved to be their greatest defender at that time. C...

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of...

Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741 at the age of fifty-three he entered into a spiritual phase in which he eventua...

William Stukeley was an English antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work for which he has been remembered as "probably... the most important of the early forerun...

Hans Poulsen Egede was a Dano-Norwegian Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizin...

Griffith Jones was a minister of the Church of England famous for his work in organising circulating schools in Wales. His name is usually associated with that of Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire. Jones was an enthusiastic member of the Soci...

The Battle of Vienna (as distinct from the Siege of Vienna in 1529) took place on September 11 and September 12 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by Turks for two months. It was the first large-scale battle of the Habsburg-Ottoman Wars, y...

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, baptised as Catherine Tekakwitha and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, is a Roman Catholic saint, and was an Algonquin-Mohawk virgin and religious laywoman. Born in present-day New York, she survived smallpox...

Agostino Steffani was an Italian ecclesiastic, diplomat and composer. Steffani stands somewhat apart from contemporary Italian composers (e.g., Alessandro Scarlatti) in his mastery of instrumental forms. His opera overtures, etc., show a re...

Pope Clement XI, was Pope from 1700 until his death. Born in Urbino, into a noble family that had established itself there from northern Albania in the 15th century and were originally soldiers of Scanderbeg against the Ottoman Empire. Duri...