Philip IV, known as “the Fair,” king of France from 1285 to 1314, earned his nickname due to his immense stature and the beauty of his impassive face. The French prelate Bernard Saisset described him ...

As superintendent of finances, Nicolas Fouquet implemented several reforms that helped to modernize and centralize the French economy. He established a system of tax collection and introduced measures ...

The European black slave trade began in 1441, when Portuguese navigators Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão captured 10 black people near Cape Bojador in Africa and brought them back to Portugal to be ...

The Tokyo Tower of Babel is a proposed hyperbuilding in the city of Tokyo that is 33,000 feet or 6,2 miles (10 km) tall. The Tokyo Tower of Babel was designed as a new megastructure by Professor ...

The Shaolin monks brought the Gùn (Chinese: 棍), a staff used in their style of stick combat, to Japan. In that region, the gùn underwent various changes before becoming known as the bō. During this ...

The sarissa is a spear that was in use in the early third century BC and was between 180 and 300 inches in length (4.5–7.5 m). During Alexander the Great‘s conquests and the Wars of the Diadochi, this ...

X-Seed 4000 is a 13,100-foot (4,000-meter) tall megastructure with 800 floors. It has a capacity for 1 million people living inside at the same time. The X-Seed 4000 is a floating “ocean city” off the ...

The Parma shield was a round Roman shield that was widely used by Roman soldiers from the 1st to the 8th century AD. It resembled the Greek aspis and played a significant role in Roman military ...

Yubitsume (“finger shortening”) is the act of amputating a finger with a sharp knife or tantō. This gesture of remorse, protest, or apology is commonly seen among Japanese gang members such as the ...

During Genghis Khan’s rule, a tradition was followed where the most attractive women from each tribe were selected by Genghis Khan to be his concubines. Aside from Mongolian women, these concubines ...

The flamberge sword was advantageous because its blade significantly reduced the striking surface upon contact with the target. The concentrated force of the wavy blade’s impact made the curved edge ...

In many derogatory titles that had little to do with the actual inhabitants of the area, Tartaria became the most popular term for Central Asia and Siberia in European sources. European knowledge of ...