Death: Did you mean...?

The Black Death is the name given to the plague outbreak in Europe between 1347-1352 CE. The term was only coined after 1800 CE in reference to the black buboes (growths) which erupted in the groin, armpit, and around the ears of those infected...

"Give me liberty or give me death!” is the closing line from a speech made by Patrick Henry to the Second Virginia Convention on 23 March 1775, in which he argued that war with Britain was inevitable and a militia should be raised to defend...

John Wycliffe (l. 1330-1384, also John Wyclif) was an English theologian, priest, and scholar, recognized as a forerunner to the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Wycliffe condemned the practices of the medieval Church, citing many of the...

Patrick Henry (1736-1799) was a Virginian lawyer and politician who played a vital role in the American Revolution (c. 1765-1789). Known for his brilliant oration, including the famous Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech, Henry served...

Medieval serfs (aka villeins) were unfree labourers who worked the land of a landowner (or tenant) in return for physical and legal protection and the right to work a separate piece of land for their own basic needs. Serfs made up 75% of...

People in the Middle Ages have acquired something of a bad reputation when it comes to cleanliness, especially the peasantry. However, despite the general lack of running water and other modern amenities, there were common expectations of...

Medieval European Manorialism (Manorial System) was the system where rural society was arranged around a manor house or castle on an estate. The smallest units of these estates were called manors. Free and unfree labourers here worked the...

St. Anthony's Fire (SAF) is an illness brought on by the ingestion of fungus-contaminated rye grain causing ergot poisoning (ergotism). The disease's common name derives from the medieval Benedictine monks dedicated to that saint who offered...

The River Ganges, also known as the Ganga, flows 2,700 km from the Himalaya mountains to the Bay of Bengal in northern India and Bangladesh. Regarded as sacred by Hindus, the river is personified as the goddess Ganga in ancient texts and...

Unlike the rich corpus of ancient Egyptian funerary texts, no such “guidebooks” from Mesopotamia detail the afterlife and the soul's fate after death. Instead, ancient Mesopotamian views of the afterlife must be pieced together...