20th Century

A biplane takes off from Newfoundland

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

Record producer Joe Meek

Joe Meek: the life and legacy of the British record producer

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

Queen Elizabeth II driving her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne at Windsor, 1957. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Why do Brits drive on the left-hand side of the road? Plus 4 other facts about the history of driving in Britain

The Queen reminds Prince William that he should not be kneeling down and talking to George during the Trooping the Colour parade. (Image by JUSTIN TALLIS /AFP/ Getty Images)

Dads with royal duties

Bemused families in Narodychi, Ukraine watch neighbours preparing to leave home shortly after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, just 50 miles (80km) to the east. The Soviet state proposed to re-house rural inhabitants in badly affected districts, but many preferred to stay despite (or perhaps unaware of the danger of) the high radiation detected by Geiger counters. (Photo by Igor Kostin/Sygma via Getty Images)

Eyewitness account: the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster

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Amritsar massacre. (Photo by Alamy)

The Amritsar assassin . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British spy writer Ian Fleming at his home, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. (Photo by Harry Benson/Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

The man behind James Bond

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Anita Anand, photographed in London.

Books interview with Anita Anand: “Singh hoped that he would be the catalyst for a revolution” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A protester in a headlock, Southall, April 1979, when a member of the Anti-Nazi League died after being struck on the head. (Images by Getty Images)

1979: Britain in meltdown

Thatcher holds up two shopping bags to show how much less a pound would buy due to inflation under Labour. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Are we still living in Thatcher’s Britain?

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Empire Cinema and Casino, Leicester Square, London. It was originally a theatre and ballet venue, before reopening as a music hall in 1884. (Image by Alamy)

History explorer: The birth of British cinema . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Wilfred Thesiger in Oman, c1946.

My history hero: Frank Gardner chooses Wilfred Thesiger . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Gerald Heard had a peculiar idea that the UFOs then being sighted all across the globe, as such as this ‘sighting’ in Sicily, were piloted not by humanoid ETs, as you may have presumed, but by alien super-bees from Mars. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

6 of history’s strangest ever theories about outer space

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What is the nature of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy?