Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

President Abraham Lincoln visiting soldiers encamped at the Civil War battlefield of Antietam in Maryland, 1 October 1862. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

The American Civil War: 7 facts and fictions

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

Old Crofters Cottage, near Broadford, looking North, Isle of Skye, Scotland. (Photo by Getty Images)

The Scottish Clearances. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British Indian soldiers stand at attention prior to inspection at Singapore, December 1941. (Photo by Alamy)

World War Two’s ‘ordinary’ soldiers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An ancient Roman relief shows a midwife delivering a baby. Many midwives had other occupations, and undertook the task as a contribution to their community. (Wellcome Images)

Call the (Roman) midwife

In only two years, Hernán Cortés brought about the downfall of an efficient military civilisation through a combination of diplomacy, warfare, tactics, luck and sheer force of personality, writes Caroline Dodds. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Cortés and Montezuma: the conquering of Tenochtitlan

Towards the end of the third century BC, the First Emperor of China sought to make his new state immortal by shielding it with what would be the earliest predecessor to the Great Wall. (Photo by Jean-Luc PETIT/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

A brief history of border walls – from 2,000 BC to Trump’s Mexico wall

An illustration depicting the procession to the House of Commons to deliver People's Charter to government in 1842. (Photo by Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A brief history of Chartism

Hallie Rubenhold. (Photo by Fran Monks)

The women killed by Jack the Ripper. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The legendary Varangian (Viking mercenary) Rurik and his brothers arrive in Staraya Ladoga. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Global Vikings: how the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain

Falkner Street, Liverpool in the 1960s. A house on this road was the star of a 2018 BBC series. Image by Nick Hedges

David Olusoga on house histories: "Our homes are often the sites of great dramas and tragedies"

A painting of the Amritsar massacre. While Churchill described the killings as "without precedent", MP Benjamin Spoor said: "Amritsar is not an isolated event, any more than General Dyer is an isolated officer." (Photo by AKG Images)

The Amritsar massacre: the British empire's darkest day

Clifford's Tower stands on the site where around 150 Jews took their own lives rather than renounce their faith, in 1190. (Photo by Dreamstime)

The persecution of Jews in medieval England

(Photo by Alamy)

Brexit lessons from history

Comedian Rhona Cameron and political activist Peter Tatchell help to hold a banner at an LGBT Pride event in London, 1998. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The historians’ view: is the world finally waking up to transgender issues?

Is it true that an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their own prime minister in 1672? (Illustration by Glen McBeth)

Q&AIs it true that an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their own prime minister in 1672?

Sexing up history: how to study and tell the history of sex

English countrywoman (right) with a lady of the court. From ‘Civitates Orbis Terrarum’, 1572. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Tudor women: what was life like?

Woodcut of a woman who may be stoking a furnace or baking bread, printed in the 15th century. (SSPL/Getty Images)

What was life like for a medieval housewife?

Bill Edwardes, who at the age of 16 joined the army to fight during WW2.

Second World War

The boys who lied about their age to fight in WW2

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve

An example of the Zimmermann Telegram

First World War

The Zimmermann telegram: the telegram that brought America into the First World War

The expulsion of Jews from France in 1182. Found in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The Jews of medieval England

The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway, 1888. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

In pictures: fairytales through history

Bart van Es, winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2019 prize. (Photo by Alamy)

Bart van Es on The Cut Out Girl. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British soldiers while away the hours in a photograph captioned "The long, long Burmese day", c1892. Many imperial troops went decades without firing a shot in anger. (Photo by National Media Museum/Royal Photographic Society/SSPL/Getty Images)

Britain’s bored imperialists

Rogues' gallery: Images of criminals incarcerated in prisons including Wormwood Scrubs and Newcastle City Gaol, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their crimes included stealing clothes, money, boots, and leather. Recent research into Victorian mugshot books – and increasing digital access to court and prison records – offers a different picture of Victorian criminality to the one painted by writers such as Charles Dickens, argues Heather Shore. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

Dark secrets of the Victorian Underworld: did hardened criminals stalk Britain's cities?

The regions of Britain in 1635, before the 1707 Acts of Union that united England and Scotland. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

“The anglocentric view we have of British history is unsustainable,” says Misha Glenny. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Roman mosaic of a dog, bearing the legend 'Cave Canem' underneath, from Pompeii, from Naples National Museum's collection, 1st century. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

6 things you (probably) didn’t know about animals in ancient Rome

10 famous people in history and their bizarre pets