Social history

School bell with wooden handle isolated on white background.

Q&A Why do we say 'saved by the bell'?

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Quiz – Would you have been accepted to join the army and fight in WW1 in August 1914? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Kathryn Ferry, UK seaside expert in Hastings, East Sussex

History explorer: The interwar holiday revolution . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Panic ensues in this depiction of the Peterloo Massacre, published in 1819. (The art archive/Getty Images)

Why were there so few casualties at Peterloo?

Photo of cherry bakewells

Q&A Is the Bakewell tart really from Bakewell?

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10 tips for surviving on the home front during the Second World War

Danish astronomer Ole Romer (1644–1710). (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

10 astronomers you’ve (probably) never heard of

An illustration of a Tudor street

“Mooke, fylthe and other vyle things”: Tudor dirt and dung

A still from the set of 'Westward the Women', directed by William A Wellman. (Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

How the Wild West was spun

A letter-writer depicted by Janez Subic, c1878. (© Getty)

The great Victorian letter swindle

Crowds in Coronation Park, Delhi, celebrate the coronation of King George V in 1911. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Library Did Britain make the modern world?

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The World War Two French resistance and British holidays . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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William Kent, a Yorkshire-born artist and architect

History explorer: The English landscape garden . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An oil painting by John Cleveley The Elder depicting the Royal Naval Dockyard

The quest for longitude: the men who mapped the surface of the earth

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7 Victorian jokes have been given a modern twist – and they’re hilarious