Th real story of Ragnar.

William Marshal
Saul David investigates the violent world of the medieval melee tournament. Unlike the better known joust, this was a brutal brawl with sharpened weapons, few rules, and one undisputed champion- William Marshal. Saul investigates Marshal's life, discovering his epic rise from a tournament champion to the Regent of England who saved a kingdom on the battlefield. Saul also experiments with Marshal's weapons. ©BBC

Alfred the Great

By 870 the Danes had overthrown the kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia, and were preparing to do the same to Wessex. Standing in their way was a young king of Wessex, Alfred by name. At first the fight went badly for Alfred; some of his allies found it more expedient to cooperate with the Danes, and in 877 he was pushed back to a small corner of the marshes around Athelney, in Somerset.The tale of the griddle-cakes. It is this time, at the low ebb of Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Danes, that is commemorated in the folk tale of Alfred and the griddle cakes. The story goes that Alfred was so low in his fortunes that he was forced to travel anonymously and seek lodging in a peasant woman's hut. Told to mind the cakes cooking on the fire, Alfred let his thoughts wander to his troubles. The cakes burned, and the peasant woman gave her king a good scolding for his carelessness. True or not, the story illustrates the depth to which the young Alfred had sunk in his battle with the Danish invaders. From that point on, however, things began to look up.Alfred's triumph. Alfred came out of the Athelney marshes and surprised the Danes under Guthrum at Edington, in Wiltshire. After a thorough victory for Alfred, Guthrum was chased back to his base at Chippenham, where he was besieged for two weeks. Eventually Guthrum surrendered, and agreed to retreat from Wessex, and also to accept baptism as a Christian. This baptism was solemnized at Wedmore, in Somerset, some weeks later, giving us what is known as the Peace of Wedmore. The Danes retreated to East Anglia, and Alfred got on with consolidating his gains. Alfred's Towns. Alfred was an innovator and a thinker, as well as a successful warrior. He began a policy encouraging the formation of fortified towns, or burhs, throughout his lands, such that no place in Wessex was more than 20 miles from a town. In exchange for free plots of land within the towns, settlers provided a defense force. The burhs were also encouraged to become centres of commerce and local government. The Danelaw. Alfred built a new and improved navy to better meet the sea-faring Danes on their own terms. He wrested London from Danish control and reached the agreement by which England was divided into two zones; the south and west, where Saxon law would apply, and the north and east, where Danish law ruled. This second territory became known as the Danelaw.Alfred's Legacy. Alfred also did his bit on the cultural front. He established schools and encouraged the dissemination of knowledge. He is said to have personally translated several books from Latin into the Anglo-Saxon tongue. An untraceable myth has it that he established the first university at Oxford. From the depths of despair in 877, Alfred brought Anglo-Saxon England into a golden age of social stability and artistic accomplishment. He was one of the first kings who seems to have looked beyond his own personal glory to a vision of the future well-being of the nation he ruled. He has every right to be remembered as Alfred "The Great".

The Conquerors - William the Conqueror

William I, also known as William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conquérant), was the first Norman King of England from Christmas 1066 until his death. He was also Duke of Normandy from July 3 1035 until his death, under the name William II. Before his conquest of England, he was known as William the Bastard because of the illegitimacy of his birth.

To press his claim to the English crown, William invaded England in 1066, leading an army of Normans, Bretons, Flemings, Frisians, Frenchmen and Viking Mercenaries to victory over the English forces of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, and suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest.

Paul the Apostle Full Movie*
The life of the Apostle Paul, based on the book of Acts.

Movie in Romanian, English subtitles

Vladimir III, Dracul, Prince of Wallachia 1431–1476.
Vlad had three aims for Wallachia: to strengthen the country's economy, its defense and his own political power. He took measures to help the peasants' well-being by building new villages and raising agricultural output. He understood the importance of trade for the development of Wallachia. He helped the Wallachian merchants by limiting foreign merchant trade to three market towns: Târg?or, Câmpulung and Târgovi?te.

Vlad was highly educated and is believed to have learned combat skills, geography, mathematics, science, languages Old Church Slavonic, German, Latin, and the classical arts and philosophy. One of the descendants of Vlad is Elizabeth II, Queen of England.

Vlad III is remembered for spending much of his rule fighting against the Ottoman Empire and its expansion into Eastern Europe and for the impaling of his chief enemies the Turks. Already during his lifetime, his reputation of excessive cruelty, spread abroad to Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

It has also been said that in 1462 Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, returned to Constantinople without engaging in any battles after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled Turkish prisoners outside Vlad's capital of Târgovi?te

Braham Stoker best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Count Dracula used Vlad's name and reputation as the original basis of his novel.

The Russian version of the stories about Vlad the Impaler called "The Tale of the Warlord Dracula" is thought to have been written sometime between 1481 and 1486 right after Vlad's death.

According to the Sagas of Icelanders, Norsemen from Iceland first settled Greenland in the 980s. Erik the Red (Old Norse: Eiríkr rauði), having been banished from Iceland for manslaughter, is said to have explored the uninhabited southwestern coast of Greenland during the three years of his banishment. He made plans to entice settlers to the area, even purposefully choosing the name Greenland to attract potential colonists, saying "that people would be more eager to go there because the land had a good name". The inner reaches of one long fjord, named Eiriksfjord after him, was where he eventually established his estate Brattahlid.

Eirik issued tracts of land to his followers. According to the Icelandic sagas ("Eirik the Red's Saga" and the "Saga of the Greenlanders"), the Norse started to explore lands to the west of Greenland only a few years after the Greenland settlements were established. In 985 while sailing from Iceland to Greenland with a migration fleet consisting of 400-700 settlers and 25 other ships (14 of which completed the journey), a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson was blown off course, and after three days sailing he sighted land west of the fleet. Bjarni was only interested in finding his father's farm, but he described his discovery to Leif Ericson who explored the area in more detail and planted a small settlement fifteen years later.

The sagas describe three separate areas discovered during the explorations: Helluland, which means "land of the flat stones "; Markland, "the land of forests", definitely of interest to settlers in Greenland where there were few trees; and Vinland, "the land of wine" (or as suggested by modern linguists "the land of meadows"), found somewhere south of Markland. It was in Vinland that the settlement described in the sagas was founded. All four of Erik the Red's children visited the North American continent: his sons Leif, Thorvald and Thorstein and their sister Freydis. Thorvald died there. Settlements in continental North America aimed to exploit natural resources such as furs and in particular lumber, which was in short supply in Greenland. It is unclear why the short-term settlements did not become permanent, though it was in part because of hostile relations with the indigenous peoples, referred to as Skrælings by the Norse.  Nevertheless, it appears that sporadic voyages to Markland for forages, timber, and trade with the locals could have lasted as long as 400 years. Evidence of continuing trips includes the Maine Penny, a Norwegian coin from King Olaf Kyrre's reign (1066-1080), suggesting an exchange between the Norse and the Skrælingar late in or after the 11th century, and an entry in the Icelandic Annals from 1347 which refers to a small Greenlandic vessel with a crew of eighteen that arrived in Iceland while attempting to return to Greenland from Markland with a load of timber.