Volume 17 Issue 4 April 1967

A view of the Russian Colony of Novo-Arkhangel’sk, Sitka Island, Alaska, by Friedrich Heinrich von Kittlitz, 1826. Library of Congress. Public Domain.

Alaska: Russia’s American Folly

In 1867 the United States purchased Alaska from Tsar Alexander II at a price of just two cents an acre. What brought Russia’s American empire to such an ignominious end?

In this 15th-century French miniature depicting the Battle of Manzikert, the combatants are clad in contemporary Western European armour.

The Battle of Manzikert

On August 26th, 1071, Byzantine army was defeated by the Seljuk Turks, and Anatolia was forever lost to Christendom.

John Napier of Merchiston

W. Brownlie Hendry describes how a sixteenth-century Scottish laird, with, in Gibbon's words, ‘a head to contrive and a hand to execute,’ worked out the powerful aid to mathematical calculation known as logarithms.

The Social Decline of Bath

David J. Jeremy writes that from the moment of Beau Nash’s quitting the scene of his power and pride, corruptions and relaxations crept, insensibly, into his formal and elaborate system of public punctilio.

Palace of 100 Columns and Tomb of Artaxerxes III, June 2014 by Elessar2008. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Persia and Persepolis, Part I

George Woodcock describes how, towards the end of the seventh century BC, the Persians first began to establish themselves as a rising power in the Middle East.

The Origin of Religion in Theory and Archaeology

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the earliest representatives of mankind were concerned with three fundamental problems— birth, death and the supply of food—which they attempted to solve by magico-religious means.