History
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin really thought he was doing everyone a favour. Picture it: a French doctor, wig slightly askew, passionately proposing a machine that would,…
4 min read
History
In the sweltering summer of 1518, Strasbourg, that fine medieval city snug between what we now call France and Germany, was gripped by a…
6 min read
History
Francisco Pizarro: this was a man whose life read like a particularly bloody adventure novel, one in which the pig herder ends up as…
6 min read
History
Of all the unlikely mascots to march into the pages of military history, Wojtek the bear carried ammunition and drank beer with the troops,…
6 min read
History
The Berlin Wall and events surrounding it are one of those historical rollercoasters that somehow manage to be tragic, absurd, bureaucratically surreal, and graffiti-worthy…
6 min read
History
The gods and rituals of Roman religion had a flair for spectacle, bureaucracy, and a touch of organised chaos that would make any modern…
7 min read
History
If you’ve ever thought that life in the Iron Age was all iron swords, painted faces, and heroic shouting from the tops of misty…
6 min read
History
The word that still echoes through history classrooms and travel documentaries alike: conquistador. It sounds like a title bestowed upon a sword-wielding overachiever in…
4 min read
History
George III wasn’t supposed to be interesting. That was the job of his more scandalous ancestors or the opium-poet offspring who followed. Yet here…
6 min read
History
On 4 October 1957, the world changed with a beep. Not a speech. Not a gunshot. Just a beep. A cold, metallic, rhythmic blip…
6 min read
