Isaac Newton investigating light

Science and technology

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. (Photo by Getty Images)

Yuri Gagarin: 8 things you (probably) didn’t know about the first man in space

Miniature from an Apocalypse of Cambrai depicting the opening of the sixth seal: an earthquake occurs and the sun becomes black. Municipal library, Cambrai, France. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

Written in the stars: 7 celestial events that may have changed history

Photo of sand dunes

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

The race to save Apollo 13

Hidden Figures: the incredible real history behind the film

British nurse Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), aka the 'Lady with the lamp', makes her rounds during the Crimean War. (Photo by Illustrated London News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The lady with the stats: how Florence Nightingale’s nursing by numbers is still influencing today’s healthcare

Einstein on the run

Einstein on the run: when the brilliant scientist fled to England

A contemporary portrait of scientist Ada Lovelace

History heroKonnie Huq chooses Ada Lovelace (1815–52)

Photo of a gramophone

Q&AWho do we say 'put a sock in it'?

In pictures: Soviet cosmonauts and the birth of the space age

On 20 July 1969, Lunar Module 'Eagle' touched down gently on the Sea of Tranquility on the moon. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers via Getty Images)

From ‘moon-germs’ to motion sickness: health and safety on NASA’s 1969 lunar landing mission

A photo which was believed to be of the Loch Ness Monster

The quest for the Loch Ness Monster

A 15th-century map of the world illustrating a Latin edition of Ptolemy's the 'Geography'. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

12 alternative giant leaps for mankind – from carnivorism to Magna Carta

NASA’s unknown Welsh hero: the story of Tecwyn Roberts

Kendrick Oliver explores the space race that led to the 1969 moon landing and considers the legacy of the momentous events of July 1969. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

The race to the moon. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A cartoon showing a man in a suit of armour on the moon

Q&ADid NASA really pick the brains of the Tower of London armoury when designing the first space suits?

BBC Sky at Night MagazineWhere did the Apollo astronauts land on the Moon?

Launch of the Apollo 16 mission, 1972. ((Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the Moon

A portrait of 17th-century scholar John Wilkins

Ye final frontier: the 17th-century space race

Back down to Earth: the legacy of the 1969 moon landing

Wrens worked as code-breakers at Bletchley Park.

Second World War

Female codebreakers: the women of Bletchley Park

A biplane takes off from Newfoundland

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

c60 AD, Queen Boudica of the Iceni holding a spear. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

8 things you may not know about British history

Alfred Nobel (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Great misconceptions: There is a Nobel Prize for economics

A group of skaters on a frozen-over backwater of the River Thames at Abingdon, 1895. (Photo by English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A brief history of climate change warnings

c1935: Beatrice Shilling sits astride her Norton motorcycle. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

5 "bloody brilliant" 20th-century women

The miller Samuel Wood, whose arm and scapula were torn off when entangled in a rope attached to a moving mill machinery in 1737. (Photo by Alamy)

7 bizarre cases in the history of medicine

Making the modern world. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A female computer programmer demonstrates a new computer in the 1960s.

The changing role of women in British computing

Charles Lindbergh, photographed alongside the ‘Spirit of St. Louis’.

A pioneering flight: Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic crossing