Weird and wonderful history

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Was a nine-year-old boy imprisoned for making a joke about Louis XIV’s bald head?

An illustration depicting medieval pilgrims. (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

The Library Medieval tourism: pilgrimages and tourist destinations

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Buy yourself a drink

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Q&A: How did the Romans write fractions?

What are the origins of the ‘mutes’ that attended Victorian funerals?

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The phone call

Painting depicting medieval nuns. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

17th-century nuns on the run

English medical student Roger Bannister

A history of British sport

An 18th century village in Germany. Strict laws regulated the goods that each social class could buy. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Beware what you buy: the goods German citizens were forbidden to consume

An illustration from ‘A Short History of the English People’ by John Richard Green. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Drowning in Tudor England: why was water so dangerous?

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How far could a person expect to travel in a single day on horseback or in a stagecoach?

<> on May 30, 2014 in Kirkwall, Scotland.

Prehistoric village people: exploring the Orkney Islands

A woodcut showing Prince Rupert of the Rhine's pet poodle Boy being killed at the battle of Marston Moor

The prince and the devil dog: the strange story of Prince Rupert’s poodle ‘Boy’

A woman empties a chamber pot in this wood carving from c1489. In the medieval period,

5 of the worst smells in medieval London

Map of Algiers, c1700. It was here that Icelanders, including Ólafur Egilsson, were sold into slavery. (Culture Club/Getty Images)

Barbary pirates: kidnapped in Iceland