Sportsmen with roots in the Emerald Isle reshaped the image of the shantytwon ruffian. In his 1888 book The Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, a high-minded treatise on the ennobling effect of sports, the journalist, poet, and Irish exile John Boyle O’Reilly wrote that “there is no branch of athletics in which Irishmen, or the[…]
For generations, a mysterious ethnic group was shunned, but new research sheds light on its Revolutionary War origins. By Dr. Glen Browder (above) and Terri Anne Ognibene (not pictured)Browder: Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Jacksonville State UniversityOgnibene: Spanish Teacher, Pope High School Sumter County is located in South Carolina’s midlands, about an hour and a[…]
The official conversion of Kyivan Rus’ took place in 988, and imparted an exceptionally high status to the Grand Prince. By Olga Kerziouk This year marks the 1022nd anniversary of the completion and consecration of the first stone-built church in the state of Ukraine-Rus’, the Church of the Dormition (better known as the Church of[…]
Kievan Rus’, medieval Ukraine, played an important role in both Russia and Europe. Introduction Kievan Rus′ was the early, mostly East Slavic state dominated by the city of Kiev from about 880 C.E. to the middle of the twelfth century. People speaking East Slavic dialects were known from the ninth century as Rus (also referred[…]
They cleverly allied themselves with European powers in order to protect themselves from the Ottomans. Introduction The Safavids were a native Iranian dynasty from Azarbaijan that ruled from 1501 to 1736, and which established Shi’a Islam as Iran’s official religion and united its provinces under a single Iranian sovereignty in the early modern period. This[…]
A mixed, cosmopolitan form of social and cultural life combining Hellenic (Greek) traditions with indigenous traditions emerged in the eastern Mediterranean region after Alexander’s conquests. Introduction The term Hellenistic (“Greek-like”) was invented in the nineteenth century A.D. to designate the period of Greek and Near Eastern history from the death of Alexander the Great in[…]