North America

Beyond Normandy: the global war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

1960s model. (Photo by Alamy)

Women in the 1960s. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A biplane takes off from Newfoundland

Alcock and Brown: the first aviators to fly across the Atlantic

US baseball legend, Joseph 'Shoeless Joe' Jackson, who was banned from the game along with seven other players after admitting that they had accepted money to lose the 1919 World Series.

“Say it ain’t so”: The ‘Black Sox’ scandal that rocked American baseball. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A battle of wills: why the South lost the American Civil War

President Abraham Lincoln visiting soldiers encamped at the Civil War battlefield of Antietam in Maryland, 1 October 1862. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

The American Civil War: 7 facts and fictions. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A US soldier teaching two junior 'rookie' recruits how to clean a gun during the First World War

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about America’s entry and involvement in the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A joint Franco-Native Indian raid left 56 residents of Deerfield, a small township in north-western Massachusetts, dead. (Alamy)

America: Brave new world or accident?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A French print by the Thierry bothers depicting the appearance of the landscape and inhabitants of the Moon

How to carry off a great hoax. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Viking ships sailing towards unknown land. (Photo by Getty Images)

The global Vikings. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A painting depicting the Mexican-American War of 1846–48: battle of Buena Vista, also known as battle of Angostura. Since that traumatic war, the US-Mexico bilateral relationship "has experienced sharp ups-and-downs; but there have also been underlying continuities," says Professor Alan Knight. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Peace, stability and pragmatism: a brief history of US-Mexico relations. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Comedian Rhona Cameron and political activist Peter Tatchell help to hold a banner at an LGBT Pride event in London, 1998. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The historians’ view: is the world finally waking up to transgender issues?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Captain James Lawrence of the Chesapeake is wounded

The capture of the Chesapeake: how the British Royal Navy rescued its reputation in the War of 1812. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An example of the Zimmermann Telegram

First World War

The Zimmermann telegram: the telegram that brought America into the First World War

'Soccer' and 'diaper' are among many 'American' words that are more faithful to the old English tongue than those used in Britain today, says James Evans. Other 'Americanisms' were used in Shakespeare's plays before the first English colony was established in Virginia. (L to R: Photos by Hulton Archive/Getty Images; DeAgostini/Getty Images; Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From candy to diapers: the purity of American English. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The crew of ‘Mi Amigo’. The pilot, 23-year-old Lt John Kriegshauser, can be seen in the front row, far left. (Photo courtesy of Sheffield County Council via American Air Museum in Britain)

Mi Amigo: the deadly WW2 bomber crash in Sheffield play park that killed 10 airmen. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A painting of America’s founding fathers inside the National Archives in Washington DC. (Photo by Visions of America/UIG via Getty Images)

A history of United States government shutdowns. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker with Tony Foulds, 82, who for nearly 75 years has tended the memorial of 10 US airmen who were killed when their B-17 crashed in Endcliffe Park in Sheffield in February 1944. Tony witnessed the crash as an eight-year-old boy. (Photo courtesy of Dan Walker)

Second World War

“We got Tony a fly-past”: how BBC’s Dan Walker organised tribute to WW2 plane crash heroes in Sheffield

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan

How The Beatles broke America. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi.

Did the Cold War ever really end?

Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. (Photo by Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Alexander Hamilton vs Thomas Jefferson: the rise and fall of America's founding fathers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi

Did the Age of Exploration bring more harm than good?

The unemployed scramble for soup tickets in an engraving from 'The Illustrated London News'. Elizur Wright observed the plight of the poor with a horrified fascination. (Photo by Massachusetts Historical Society/ Bridgeman)

A Victorian Bill Bryson: Elizur Wright's letters from Great Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (L) fights Dick Tiger (R) in Madison Square Garden, New York, 1965 (Photo by Getty Images)

The story of the Hurricane. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The bronze statue in Washington DC celebrating Abraham Lincoln's emancipation of slaves shows the 16th president standing over a shackled African American. Lincoln is "one of the towering figures in the story that Americans tell about themselves," writes Lucy Worsley. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would"

A painting depicting George Washington with British soldiers at Yorktown. In the final battle of the war at the siege of Yorktown, writes Jem Duducu, there were nearlyas many French soldiers and sailors as American rebels fighting for colonial independence. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

American history myths: 7 things people get wrong

The president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt and his staff gathered together in New York to find a solution to the economic crisis. 1935. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Icons: the game changers of the 20th century. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The "brilliant" Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse in 1935. (Getty Images)

My history hero: Walt Disney (1901-66). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.