Devshirme, the recruitment of Christian children by the Ottoman …
WEBAug 18, 2020 · The first, called Kapıkulu Süvari (Cavalry of the Servants of the Sublime Gate), was an elite troop structured into six divisions and made up of the sipahi (a word derived from the Persian sepâhi), equivalent to the European knights.In other words, they were noble holders of a swindle (fiefdom) which, in a conceptual medieval survival, had been granted to them by the sultan in exchange for ...
Luz Long, the German athlete who befriended Jesse Owens and …
WEBMay 13, 2020 · The next day the final was held – immortalised by Leni Riefenstahl’s camera in her Fest der Völker (Festival of Nations), the first part of her famous Olympia film – and although Long managed to jump 7.87, Owens smashed that mark with 8.06, breaking the Olympic record and climbing to the top of the podium; the bronze went to Japan’s Naoto Tajima (who would later win in the triple jump ...
The sword embedded in the rock of the precipice of Rocamadour …
WEBOct 15, 2019 · The sword embedded in the rock of the precipice of Rocamadour for 9 centuries. Durandal (or Durandarte) was the famous sword of Roland, the Frankish knight who died at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass on 15 August 788 by attack of the Basques. The accounts of that battle and the subsequent fate of the …
Miyamoto Musashi, the invincible warrior who won more than 60 …
WEBNov 5, 2018 · And the duels continued; he disputed more than sixty and was always victorious even when many of them were against masters. In 1607 he defeated Musō Gonnosuke, founder of the Shintō Musō school, who developed a new style of fighting with a stick to take revenge; it is not known if they came to fight a second time.
Albinoni’s Adagio was composed by the Italian musicologist Remo ...
WEBFeb 24, 2019 · Surely this is surprising because, after all, the famous Adagio in G minor is not only one of the best-known pieces of classical music but also one of the most popular among music lovers with a closely linked name of title and author: “Albinoni’s Adagio”. It is ironic, therefore, that in reality the work is not by that baroque composer but by a biographer of him who lived two centuries ...
The tiny Croatian island that has more than 23 kilometers of walls …
WEBSep 6, 2019 · Without reaching the Greek profusion, Croatia has 79 large islands, more than 500 smaller islets and another 642 tiny rocks covering an area of about 3,300 square kilometers. One such small island is Baljenac (or Bavljenac), located off the Dalmatian coast in the south of the country and forming
The Origin and History of the Phrase ‘The Empire on which the …
WEBDec 11, 2023 · That century saw three monarchs on the Spanish throne, Philip III, Philip IV, and Charles II. However, it was during the reign of the second that the French king Louis XIV imitated his significant moniker of King Planet, adopting the title of Sun King and the motto Nec pluribus impar, confusingly translated (perhaps “Not unequal to many”) as France achieved its period of greatest splendor ...
Electrum, the natural gold and silver alloy used to mint the first ...
WEBMay 20, 2020 · Electrum, we said, is composed of gold and silver; it has a proportion of four parts of the first and one of the second, but there are also traces of other metals such as platinum or, above all, copper. This is because it is not an artificial alloy but a natural one, although it can also be manufactured, in which case the composition ...
Ibn Wahshiyya, the Nabataean who could have translated Egyptian ...
WEBMay 12, 2019 · We are referring to the Arab scholar Ibn Wahshiyya. In mid-September 1822, Jean-François Champollion managed to finish off the work that had haunted him for fifteen years: deciphering the mysterious hieroglyphic writing of Pharaonic Egypt. Champollion was a French professor at the University of Grenoble, where he …
Belzoni, the pioneer of Egyptology who unearthed the temples of …
WEBJun 19, 2022 · Thus, in 1800 he tried to start over in the Netherlands, practicing the trade he had learned from his father. It did not last long; after all, Napoleon had turned that territory into the Batavian Republic and the danger of being recognized and arrested was always present even if he avoided it by going unnoticed thanks to his northern appearance and his red hair, so three years later he moved ...