Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

A 19th-century lithograph showing a medieval criminal claiming sanctuary by placing his arm through the ring on a church door (Picture by Bridgman)

Sanctuary in medieval churches: how criminals found protection from capture and punishment. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Bloody Sunday: 50 years on. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Illustration by Luke Waller

The Pentrich Rising: England's forgotten armed revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Queen Anne’s Revenge: why was Blackbeard's flagship named after the Stuart queen?

Blackbeard, real name Edward Teach, seen standing on a dock with fuses in his beard

Blackbeard: dastardly sea-devil or kind pirate?

Barbary pirates Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa, the siblings who famously captured Algiers from the Spanish in 1516

Barbary pirates: the Muslim corsairs and their role in the slave trade

Henry Avery stands on the shore holding a cutlass, while his ship Fancy battles the Ganj-i-Sawai in the background

The real pirates of the Caribbean: your guide to Nassau's pirate republic

Henry Morgan on ship's deck in battle taking a hostage

Q&ADid pirates really live on the island of Tortuga?

Gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet is hanged from the gallows

Hunting pirates: how piracy's golden age came to an end. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read holding cutlasses

Anne Bonny and Mary Read: the deadly female pirate duo

Map showing Sir Francis Drake's privateering fleet attacking Ribeira Grande the capital of Santiago

Privateers, buccaneers and corsairs: why not all pirates were created equal

A pirate ship flying the Jolly Roger closes in on another vessel during a storm

The golden age of piracy: when pirates ruled the waves

Captain Edward Teach, better known as 'Blackbeard', a pirate who plundered the coasts of the West Indies, North Carolina and Virginia. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The most famous and despicable pirates from history

The Jolly Roger, a black flag showing a skuyll and crossbones. (Photo by Henry Guttmann Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Q&ADid all pirates fly the Jolly Roger?

A pirate uses his cutlass to force a bound and blindfolded man to walk the plank

Q&AWas walking the plank a real pirate punishment?

Pirates burying a treasure chest on a beach as their captain looks on

Q&AX marks the spot: did pirates bury their treasure?

A 17th century sketch of a peg-legged pirate walking with the aid of crutches

Q&ADid any real pirates wear eyepatches or have peg legs?

A murder mystery in 19th-century Dublin. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Hillsborough Disaster floral tributes

A brief history of the Hillsborough disaster and justice campaigner Anne Williams

Photograph of Bass Reeves, the first black deputy US marshal west of the Mississippi River

From slave to real Lone Ranger? The incredible life of black Wild West lawman Bass Reeves

Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin. (Getty Images)

First World War

Did a British agent murder Rasputin?

Black and white image of island prison, taken from the sky

The battle of Alcatraz, 1946: the most violent escape attempt in the prison’s history

England’s last witches. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Froissart illustration of Hugh Despenser the Younger's execution by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despenser is on a ladder, as a man beside him disembowels him and tosses his entrails into a fire

‘Godly butchery’: the horrifying history of hanging, drawing and quartering

In late 1781, the crew of the slave ship Zong, facing a shortage of water, threw overboard much of their ‘cargo’. The massacre of 133 African people and resulting law case – not for murder, but insurance – focusses attention to the treatment of enslaved people. (Image by Alamy)

The Zong Massacre: what the dark episode meant for the British slave trade and abolition

Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trialsEpisode 9: conclusion. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trialsEpisode 7: Quarrelsome neighbours & family tensions. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Salem: Investigating the Witch Trials HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Salem witch trialsEpisode 6: Chaos in the courtroom. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Guy Fawkes and the men behind the gunpowder plot. Guy Fawkes, best known of the conspirators, is third from the right. (Print Collector/Getty Images)

Why did the 1605 gunpowder plot fail? 9 big questions about the conspiracy to blow up parliament. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A scene from the Salem witch trials, depicted in a 19th-century lithograph. How two girls’ accusations of witchcraft escalated into one of the darkest episodes in early American history has long puzzled historians. (Image by Alamy)

When the devil stalked Salem: the story of the Salem witch trials