A child with tuberculosis What is tuberculosis? Tuberculosis is a lung disease caused by germs. Today we can usually cure it with antibiotics. But in antiquity there was no cure. Many people died [...]
Opium poppy flower Opium comes from a kind of poppy flower. It evolved around 100 million years ago in West Asia and Central Asia. People probably realized as soon as they got to West Asia, about 60,000 [...]
A Canadian Inuit village in 1575 AD Inuit trade collapses In 1500 AD, the Inuit weren't doing so well. They had been buying steel and iron weapons from Vikings and East Asian traders. They used [...]
European boys at school in the 1800s More schools and more scientists In the first half of the 1800s AD, countries in northern Europe like France and Britain forced other countries to give them [...]
Maria Christina Spain was among the first Western countries to get colonies in the 1500s, and it was among the first to lose its colonies in the 1800s. In 1810, Chile [...]
Henry VIII of England Henry VIII rules England When Henry VII died in 1509, his son Henry VIII became king of England. He was only 18 years old, but he grabbed his power [...]
Sick children from medieval Europe What sicknesses did medieval Europeans get? During the Middle Ages, most people were sick with something for most of their lives. Newborns were often born small [...]
Heian Japan: Godai Kokuzo Bodhisattva (Jingo-ji Temple, Kyoto), ca. 800-900 AD Women shut out of power After Empress Koken died in 770 AD, there was a major change in how Japan's government worked. [...]
Islamic medicine: From an Ottoman manuscript, two doctors telling the pharmacist how to make different medicines Writing medical encyclopedias Doctors made big scientific advances in medicine during the Islamic empire. The [...]
Where ibn Sina came from: Uzbekistan Ibn Sina and the Samanids in Uzbekistan Ibn Sina (known to Europeans as Avicenna) was a scientist. He was born about 980 AD in the north-eastern part of [...]
