Over 2, 000 years ago, a tyrant forbade the Israelites from practicing their religion and his forces desecrated the Holy Temple.

WHITEHOUSE: Hanukkah at the White House: A Menorah that Survived Sandy

Likewise, Carol Delaney, a cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, concludes that Columbus was a deeply religious man whose purpose was to sail to Asia to obtain gold in order to finance a crusade to take back Jerusalem and rebuild the Jews' holy Temple.

CNN: Was Columbus secretly a Jew?

Of the 58 people asphyxiated or burned to death, many were Hindu devotees, returning from a gathering at the contested site of a temple in the holy town of Ayodhya.

ECONOMIST: Sectarian tension in India

According to the AFP news agency, McDonald's will open the outlet in the middle of next year, near the Golden Temple in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in northern India.

BBC: McDonald's opens vegetarian-only restaurant

The Roman Empire eventually crumbled, but some of its banking institutions lived on in the form of the papal bankers that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire, and with the Knights Of The Temple during the Crusades.

FORBES: The Evolution Of Banking

Pick up some milky sweets or eat a nice, hot curry off a banana leaf, and see some stunning examples of Tamil temple architecture at the Sri Mariamman Temple, whose four walls enclose both the holy space of worship and, to the faithful, the universe entire.

BBC: Penang: Malaysia in miniature