Rescued Baby. Shepherd. Prophet. Moses was a smart and curious scholar. While he was best known for leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he was also human. He was a brilliant student, but he was not always patient. Since none of his writings were left behind, it is not always easy for historians to know what is true about Moses. Some people saw him as a prophet. Others felt he made some bad decisions. Moses determination and willingness...

"In the United States laws apply to everyone, they are written down, and they are not easily changed. It was not always like this. Over 3,000 years ago, a Middle Eastern king wanted to rule fairly. He had the laws of his kingdom written in stone, and then he shared the laws with his people. His name was Hammurabi and he ruled Babylon--where the country of Iraq is today--for over forty years. Although he expanded his country and won many wars, today...

"Archimedes of Syracuse (287 BCE - 212 BCE) was so ahead of his time that even now we take many of his discoveries for granted. He calculated properties of circles, spheres, cylinders, and cones, writing equations that we still use today. He calculated pi and came very close to discovering calculus, nearly beating Sir Isaac Newton by 2,000 years. He discovered why things float or sink. He learned why levers work. This creative genius saw math everywhere,...

Plato, who was born around 429 BCE, is one of the world s best known and most studied Greek philosophers. He was a student of Socrates, and he would become the teacher of Aristotle. The death of his mentor Socrates made Plato rethink his ideas about the role of philosophers in politics, and Plato ultimately founded an academy, which was the ancestor of today s modern university. He started the practice of using dialogues, a series of questions and...