Entry extracted from the book «From war to unification. History of León and Castile from 1037 to 1252». The Almohad empire, which had penetrated the Peninsula in the mid-twelfth century and by 1172 had taken over all the domains that had belonged to their Almoravid predecessors, suffered a severe c
Japan has given great inventions to the world:the bullet train, sudoku, instant noodles, karaoke... The harakiri , a gruesome ritual by which the ancient samurai slashed their entrails to commit suicide, is another of those genuinely Japanese contributions to universal culture. Strictly speaking, gu
The Byzantine emperor John II Komnenos had married the Hungarian princess Piroska who was named Irini. In this way he found himself involved in the dynastic disputes of the Hungarian kingdom. John gave asylum to a relative of his wife, but the Hungarian king Stefanos preferred him dead. When John
If you believe the version presented in Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler decided to become an artist at the age of 12. Pampered by his adoring widowed mother, he was sure he would become a famous painter in the future. In 1905, he left school to pursue his dreams. Two years later he went to Vienna to en