Born to a noble family of Wessex, England, as Wynfrid or Wynfrith, Boniface (in Latin, Bonifatius) is known as the "Apostle of Germany" for his work in Christianizing that country. First a benedictine monk and then ordained as a pr...

Abd al-Rahman I was the founder of a Muslim dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries (including the succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba). The Muslims called the regions of Iberia under their dominion al-Andalus....

Charlemagne, meaning Charles the Great, was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Cent...

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...

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...

Genghis Khan was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. After founding...

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo or simply Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented western mathematician of the Middle Ages." Fibonacci is best known to the modern world for the spreading of the Hindu-Arabic nu...

Osman I was the leader of the Ottoman Turks and the founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire. The state, while only a small principality (beylik) during Osman's lifetime, was named after him and would prevail as...

Musa I was the tenth Mansa, which translates as "King of Kings" or "Emperor", of the wealthy Mali Empire. At the time of Mansa Musa's rise to the throne, the Malian Empire consisted of territory formerly belonging to the Ghana Empire and Me...

Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc), nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (French: La Pucelle d'Orléans), is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War and was canonized as a Roman Catholic...

Mehmed II (1432-1481), nicknamed the conqueror, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire a short time in 1444 to 1446, and from 1451 to 1481. Mehmed II brought an end to the Byzantine Empire by capturing Constantinople in 1453 (during the well-...

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to gene...

Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish conquistador who founded the colony of Darién in Panama, the oldest extant European settlement in the mainland of the Americas. He crossed the Isthmus in search of gold, reaching the Pacific Ocean after a...

Francisco Pizarro was a Conquistador who seized the Inca empire for Spain. In 1510 he enrolled in an expedition of exploration in the New World, and three years later he joined Vasco Núñez de Balboa on the expedition that discovered the Pac...