The Incas’ physical landscape was a highly mythologized as their history: every peak had in own deity or apu; every cleft in the rocks, every boulder, every stream was invested with symbolic value and had its own story to account for its place in the Inca scheme of thing.

In a world where every aspect of life was governed by the gods, it was clearly important to ascertain their will. This was especially vital when undertaking any hazardous enterprise, such as going on a journey establishing a colony, or marching into battle.

The importance that the ancient Greeks attached to religious observance can be surmised from the large number of place of worship that they built. Households had their own shrines, and communities raised imposing temple complexes to demonstrate both their piety and their wealth.

At midnight, General Bonaparte had a large quantity of cannon dragged at the gallop into the centre of Paris. When, early in the morning of five October, the National Guards and a great mob marched down the Rude de Rivoli and adjoining streets in the centre of Paris, they were met with unexpected, sustained well-directed fire from muskets and cannon.

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on 27 June, 1880, a normal, healthy child, the pride of her parents. Captain Arthur Keller and his wife Katherine. Arthur Keller was of Swiss descent, had been a Confederate officer in the Civil War, was a stern, firm, upright man- but even he was appalled, incredulous, at the tragedy which struck his family. Eventually, while the child stayed in its own, dark, silent world, responding to nothing to nothing, the Kellers came to accept the truth, gave up hoping for a miracle.

The peasant girl who heard the voice of God, who roused a spineless prince and a cowed people, and freed her country from the conqueror’s yoke: that was Joan of Arc. The entire world knows her story, for Joan is one of world’s heroines; but the tale of Joan is one that is always worth the re-telling and here in this gallery of great lives, her example of faith and courage glows afresh in a brilliant setting.

Shivaji was born in a period of Mughal imperial siesta, with the afterglow of Akbar still illuminating the empire of Jehangir, the Just and Shah Jahan, the Magnificent but being a child of the hills (Aurangzeb called him a mountain rat), Shivaji could spot the shadows that lurked, behind which he hid himself, and, as they extended under Aurangzeb, he his forays, striking at the flanks, Shivaji rarely took on the Europeans: he didn’t want yet another enemy.

What the lines are who laid them out and why, are puzzles that have taxed the ingenuity of researchers from fields of study as diverse as mathematics, archeology, and dowsing. There are many clues but no final answers to the numerous questions they pose.

Situated at Baalbek on a lush, high plain, 53 miles from Beirut in Lebanon, stand the ruins of a group of Roman temples famous for the beauty and grace of their architecture.

Creating and transporting the mirror was but the first step in the realization of a dream for George Ellery Hale, one of the greatest astronomers in the United States. Hale had already masterminded the construction of what was at the time the world’s largest reflecting telescope, atop Mount Wilson in California. Completed in 1918, that telescope has a mirror 100 inches across. Hale then began planning a telescope with a mirror with twice that diameter; it would be able to explore farther into space than any other telescope in the world.obstructions, and other hazards along the lengthy route.