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Sailors believed that certain symbols and talismans would help them in facing certain events in life; they thought that those symbols would attract good luck or bad luck in the worst of the cases: Sailors, at the constant mercy of the elements, often feel the need for religious images on their bodies to appease the angry powers that caused ...
Civil wars had devastated the land, and much of the population turned to piracy. Crete became a major haven for pirates, with its strategic position in the midst of the Mediterranean and because it did not fall under the control of any of the Mediterranean empires. Cilicia was the other major pirate refuge.
The roots of the word "piracy" come from the ancient Greek πειράομαι, or peiráomai, meaning "attempt" (i.e., of something illegal for personal gain). This morphed into πειρατής, or peiratēs, meaning "brigand," and from that to the Latin pirata, where the modern English word pirate originated. [1]
Archaeologists also determined that, based on the location of the wreck, the ship had been sailing towards Stockholm when it went under, meaning it may have been just a few miles from its ...
Two styles of scimitars: an Egyptian shamshir (left) and an Ottoman kilij (right). A scimitar (/ ˈ s ɪ m ɪ t ər / or / ˈ s ɪ m ɪ t ɑːr /) [1] is a single-edged sword with a convex curved blade [2] [3] [4] of about 76.2 to 91.44cm (30 to 36 inches) associated with Middle Eastern, South Asian, or North African cultures.
The story of José Gaspar's life and career has been told in many forms since the early 20th century. The accounts generally agree that Gaspar was born in Spain about 1756, served in some capacity with the Spanish Navy until turning to piracy around 1783, and died during a battle with the United States Navy off the coast of southwest Florida in 1821.
In a pirate stronghold on the lush eastern shore of Madagascar, the child of a native-born sorceress and a roving buccaneer unites warring kingdoms, fends off a tyrant from the mountains and ...
[5] Scottish novelists Robert Louis Stevenson (author of Treasure Island) and J. M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan featuring Captain Hook) both identified Johnson's General History of the Pyrates as one of their major influences, and Stevenson even borrowed one character's name (Israel Hands) from a list of Blackbeard's crew which appeared in ...