In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy known as Helen of Sparta, was said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta but was abducted by Prince Paris of Troy after the goddess Aphrodite promised her to him in the Judgement of Paris; this resulted in the Trojan War. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda, was the sister of Clytemnestra and Polydeuces, Philonoe and Timandra. Elements of her putative biography come from classical authors such as Aristophanes, Cicero and Homer, her story reappears in Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus. A competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage saw. An oath sworn by all the suitors required all of them to provide military assistance to the winning suitor, whomever he might be, if she were stolen from him; when she married Menelaus she was still young. The legends of Helen in Troy are contradictory: Homer depicts her as a wistful sorrowful figure, who came to regret her choice and wished to be reunited with Menelaus.

Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in the carnage she caused. Paris was killed in action, in Homer's account Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of the legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead. A cult associated with her developed both at Sparta and elsewhere, she was worshiped in Attica and on Rhodes. Her beauty inspired artists of all times to represent her as the personification of ideal human beauty. Images of Helen start appearing in the 7th century BC. In classical Greece, her abduction by Paris – or escape with him – was a popular motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was depicted as a "rape" by Paris. Christopher Marlowe's lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus are cited: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" The etymology of Helen's name continues to be a problem for scholars. Georg Curtius related Helen to the moon.

Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the well-known noun ἑλένη meaning "torch". It has been suggested that the λ of Ἑλένη arose from an original ν, thus the etymology of the name would be connected with the root of Venus. Linda Lee Clader, says that none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction. More Otto Skutsch has advanced the theory that the name Helen might have two separate etymologies, which belong to different mythological figures namely *Sṷelenā and *Selenā, the first a Spartan goddess, connected to one or the other natural light phenomenon and sister of the Dioscuri, the other a vegetation goddess worshiped in Therapne as Ἑλένα Δενδρῖτις. Others have connected the name's etymology to a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European sun goddess, noting the name's connection to the word for "sun" in various Indo-European cultures. In particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader Indo-European "marriage drama" of the sun goddess, she is related to the divine twins, just as many of these goddesses are.

Martin L. West has thus proposed that Helena may be constructed on the PIE suffix -nā, connoting a deity controlling a natural element. None of the etymological sources appear to support the existence, save as a coincidence only, of a connection between the name of Helen and the name by which the classical Greeks described themselves, namely Hellenes, after Hellen the mythological progenitor of the Greeks; the origins of Helen's myth date back to the Mycenaean age. Her name first appears in the poems of Homer but scholars assume that such myths derive from earlier Mycenaean Greek sources, her mythological birthplace was Sparta of the Age of Heroes, which features prominently in the canon of Greek myth: in ancient Greek memory, the Mycenaean Bronze Age became the age of the Greek heroes. The kings and heroes of the Trojan Cycle are related to the gods, since divine origins gave stature to the Greeks' heroic ancestors; the fall of Troy came to represent a fall from an illustrious heroic age, remembered for centuries in oral tradition before being written down.

Recent archaeological excavations in Greece suggest that modern-day Laconia was a distinct territory in the Late Bronze Age, while the poets narrate that it was a rich kingdom. Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for a Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta. Modern findings suggest the area around Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia. In most sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Helen is the daughter of Zeus and of Leda, the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus. Euripides' play Helen, written in the late 5th century BC, is the earliest source to report the most familiar account of Helen's birth: that, although her putative father was Tyndareus, she was Zeus' daughter. In the form of a swan, the king of gods was chased by an eagle, sought refuge with Leda; the swan gained her affection, the two mated. L

The Wyville Thomson Ridge is a bathymetric feature of the North Atlantic Ocean floor ca. 200 km in length, located between the Faroe Islands and Scotland. The ridge separates the Faroe–Shetland Channel to the north from the Rockall Trough to the south, its significance lies in the fact that it forms part of the barrier between the colder bottom waters of the Arctic and the warmer waters of the North Atlantic. The Wyville Thomson Ridge is named after Charles Wyville Thomson who pioneered the first exploration of the area; the Wyville Thomson Ridge, the smaller but similar Ymir Ridge, form the northern boundary to the Rockall Basin, a Mesozoic rift structure. The current form of the ridge is an anticline with up to 2 km of amplitude, formed by a period of shortening during the Eocene to Miocene period; this fold is interpreted to have formed by the reactivation of a pre-existing fault, is, classified as an inversion structure

Fernando Díaz was the count and tenente of Lantarón and Cerezo on the eastern frontier of the Kingdom of León in 923–24. He was a son of count of Castile. There is a document dated 28 March 913 which records that King Vermudo was reigning in León and Fernando Díaz in Lantarón; the date on the document is impossible, since Vermudo II was not king at that time and the count of Lantarón, known from other documents, was Gonzalo Téllez. The historian Gonzalo Martínez Díez has suggested the date should be corrected to 923 and the king to Ordoño II. In 917, after the death of Count Gonzalo Fernández of Castile, a count named Fernando appears governing Castile; this may have been Fernando Díaz, active around the same time in the neighbouring region of Álava, or Fernando Ansúrez I, count of Castile at a date. In January 918, Fernando Díaz was in the city of León, where he signed a document in the cathedral as Fredinandus Didazi comes, without specifying his county. Fernando had at least two brothers: Gómez Díaz, alférez of Count Fernán González of Castile, Gonzalo Díaz