Duels of History

Could the Spanish have conquered Mexico without the help of Malinche, a Native American slave who became Hernan Cortés' translator? Enslaved by the Mayas and then the Spaniards, do...

How did Marie Curie's love affair with the married physicist Paul Langevin divide France? Jeanne Langevin, cheated on and humiliated by her husband with the world's most famous sci...

Why does the figure of revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg continue to shine whilst Friedrich Ebert, Social Democrat and President of the Weimar Republic, remains a traitor to t...

How did communist activist Angela Davis become an icon in her relentless fight against Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California? The young African-American became a target for Re...

In 1913, Camille Claudel, one of the most acclaimed artists of her time, was committed to a psychiatric asylum for insanity. She accused world-famous sculptor Auguste Rodin of pers...

Did the sentencing to death of Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, enable the Chinese Communist Party led by Deng Xiaoping to absolve it...

Why is Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, still viewed as a Machiavellian manipulator? By marrying into the family her father wanted to forge an alliance with, she bec...

How did a simple tennis match between a woman, tennis star Billie Jean King, and a man, ex-player Bobby Riggs, become a television phenomenon and change the face of women's sport?

Two thousand years after the fact, can we really say that Messalina and Agrippina, two empresses of Roman antiquity, were the criminals and depraved women described by chroniclers...

Did Marie Antoinette betray her adopted country? The queen is said to be insensitive, arrogant, ready to do anything to betray France. Did she deserve the fate reserved for her by...