Buzz Aldrin Poses next To The U.S. flag On Moon

American history

The Cuban Missile Crisis: everything you wanted to know

Phillipa Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones as the Schuyler sisters in 'Hamilton'. (Image: Disney+)

The women of Hamilton: Angelica, Eliza and… Maria Reynolds

Tom Hanks in 'Greyhound' (2020)

Second World War

The real history that inspired WW2 film Greyhound

Phyllis Schlafly

The woman who opposed equality with men: Phyllis Schlafly and the real history behind Mrs. America

Freedom fighters: the enslaved people who fought for the abolition of slavery

Huge sun setting over power lines and palm trees in California. (Photo by Getty Images)

California’s century of change

The bikini was showcased to the world for the first time in July 1946. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

8 historical events that happened in July

Pyongyang wreckage, Korean War

The Korean War “created a blood debt that is crucial to understanding North Korean behaviour ever since”

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world

Prospectors pan for gold in Siberia during the 19th century.

Where did the major gold rushes of the 19th century happen? And why were people so keen to join the gold rush?

Prospecting towns like Dawson boomed during the gold rush.

The dark side of the 19th-century gold rush

American jazz singer Helen Forrest performing with trumpeter Harry James (1916-1983), c1945. (Photo by Metronome/Getty Images)

History heroDame Vera Lynn chooses Helen Forrest (1917–99)

American spotlight: how today’s protests echo historical outrage

Violence erupted in New Orleans, and white southerners killed and injured more than 100 freed slaves during a riot against reconstruction plans. (Image by Alamy)

Rebuilding America after the Civil War: what was the Reconstruction era and why did it fail?

Slaves of Confederate Brigadier-General Thomas F Drayton at his cotton plantation in South Carolina during the American Civil War

Why is America haunted by its past?

Two girls are tried for witchcraft in a courtroom scene

What were the Salem Witch Trials?

Abraham Lincoln (Photo by Library of Congress)

The secret plot to kill Lincoln

Men operate a cotton gin in Dahomey, Mississippi, in 1898

7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered

A brief guide to the transatlantic slave trade

Woodcut illustration of slave labour on a sugar plantation

Success, sugar and slaves: the uncomfortable story of slaveholder Simon Taylor

Wrecked buildings in Los Angeles' South Central district following 1992 riots

The 1992 LA riots

Peter Mayhew, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill, on-set of the film Star Wars

Star Wars: why did the film make history?

Flying the flag: A sailor signals a merchant ship in the Thames Estuary, 1939. Allied maritime capacity was paramount in the final victory. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Second World War

WW2: Why did the Allies win the Second World War?

Tectonic foliation in metamorphic rocks at Porthleven, Cornwall. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the world made us

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944

Editor’s pick9 top articles from the BBC World Histories archive to read right now

A Wall Street speculator tries to sell his car to passersby

Your guide to the Great Depression

John Wilkes Booth leans forward to shoot President Abraham Lincoln as he watches a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C, in 1865.

Q&AWhat play was Abraham Lincoln watching when he was shot?

Astronauts being lifted from the Apollo 13 spacecraft after splashdown in the South Pacific,1970. (Photo by Alamy)

Apollo 13

Photo of sand dunes

Why the American Wild West was a "hotbed of scientific discovery"

Okinawa: the battle and the bomb