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History Today
Read more at HistoryToday.com
Recent Articles
The Woman Who Took on the Fashion Industry to Save the Birds
A global trade in feathers, with London at its heart, saw hundreds of millions of birds killed every year. Emily Williamson waged a long and furious campaign against it
By Malcolm Smith / History Today
June 28, 2021
What We Can Learn From the U.K.'s Mid-Pandemic 1918 Election
The U.K. general election of 1918 was a ‘cynical muddle’ held as influenza killed thousands across a country emerging from World War I
By Peter Keeling / History Today
May 5, 2021
How a Miniature Emancipation Proclamation Helped Recruit Black Soldiers During the Civil War
The sight of Black soldiers distributing print to other Black people in a state that criminalized the teaching of reading to the enslaved summoned up a future shaped by the possibility of increased self-determination
By Madeline Zehnder / History Today
April 12, 2021
What We Get Wrong About Medieval Libraries
Medieval manuscripts reveal the reading communities of the early Middle Ages
By Mateusz Fafinski / History Today
October 15, 2020
The Overlooked Role of Women in the American Revolution
Spinning yarn is work that has become invisible in modern life. But at the dawn of the American Revolution, it was revolutionary
By Marta Olmos / History Today
August 10, 2020
The Long History of Drinking Games—And How to Win Them
The first guide to drinking is a Latin poem published in 1536
By Michael Fontaine / History Today
July 8, 2020
How the Rise of the Working Wife Changed British Society
A momentous change in the status of women began in the 1950s
By Helen McCarthy / History Today
May 15, 2020
Why Are There 360 Degrees in a Circle?
As Greek geometry developed, it created the concept of an angle as a magnitude
By Mark Ronan / History Today
April 1, 2020
The Past and Future of Punctuation Marks
In classical times there were no punctuation marks or spaces between words. Here's how that changed
By Florence Hazrat / History Today
February 6, 2020
What We Can Learn From Ancient Graffiti
The earliest graffiti of a person’s name on a monument has been identified by the historian Lionel Casson in a cave at Wadi Hammamat in Egypt — the name of Hena, an official under Menutuhotep III in 2000 BC
By Laura Aitken-Burt / History Today
January 10, 2020
A Historic U.K. Law Was Passed After a Wave of Anti-Migrant Sentiment. Here's How It Shaped British Immigration Policy
The Aliens Act of 1905 created a new type of immigrant to the U.K. and a new way of dealing with them
By Marc Di Tommasi / History Today
October 24, 2019
The Long Debate Over What Counts as a Concentration Camp
Even for Nazi camp survivors who sought to eradicate them, they were hard to define
By Emma Kuby / History Today
September 23, 2019
What the History of Beards Reveals About the Changing Meaning of Masculinity
The historian Christopher Oldstone-Moore identifies "four great beard movements" that punctuate history
By Eleanor Rycroft / History Today
September 5, 2019
With Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz Once Again Under Threat, These Are the Lessons of the 1980s Tanker War
If tensions in the Persian Gulf lead to war, it will not be the first time
By Martin S. Navias / History Today
June 28, 2019
Where Brexit Fits in the Long British History of Petitioning Parliament
In the centuries before universal suffrage, petitioning was an indispensable tool to represent public opinion in the U.K.
By Philip Loft / History Today
April 24, 2019
The Legend of Robin Hood Is Centuries Old—But the Way We Tell His Story Has Changed
Every generation has its own Robin, adapted to fit the needs of the time
By Sean McGlynn / History Today
April 12, 2019
How an Italian Hospital Saved Patients From Nazis by Inventing a Fake Disease
This was one instance where disinformation, fear and ignorance worked as a force for good
By Francesco Buscemi / History Today
March 8, 2019
Inside a Young Fidel Castro's 1940 Letter to an American President
"My good friend Roosvelt," opens a letter a young Castro sent to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, written on Nov. 6, 1940
By Luis Martínez-Fernández / History Today
February 13, 2019
The Surprisingly Mysterious Story of the World's First Filmmaker
On Sept. 16, 1890, just before he was due to demonstrate his films in public for the first time, he boarded the Dijon to Paris train and was never seen again.
By Irfan Shah / History Today
January 30, 2019
Behind the Scenes at the House of Commons Library
Jane Fiddick, a junior library clerk who joined in 1963, is likely to have been the first woman officer of the House of Commons
By Eleanor Davis / History Today
December 7, 2018
A Century After Armistice, the American Popular Memory of World War I Is Still Shaped by Snoopy
The Great War has largely receded from American memory and popular culture—with the improbable exception of an animated beagle dressed as an aviator
By Carrie Allen Tipton / History Today
November 8, 2018
The Fight for Women's Suffrage in the U.K. Didn't Just Happen in Big Cities
The national campaign for suffrage saw women forming societies from Land’s End to John O’Groats
By Helen Antrobus / History Today
October 10, 2018
What the History of Air-Conditioning Tells Us About the Difficulty of Tackling Climate Change
Air conditioning across the U.S. brought an industrial boom—at a cost to the environment
By Simon Pirani / History Today
September 13, 2018
How Fascism's Influence Endured in Italy Long After Mussolini's Death
A sort of "pact of forgetting" affected many of the state’s institutions, including the police and the army
By John Foot / History Today
August 1, 2018
What Is Privacy? The Answer Has Been Changing for Decades
As technology changes, so do ideas about the borders of the self and the nature of privacy
By Sarah E. Igo / History Today
July 19, 2018
This Is What It Was Like to Be a Teenager in the Middle Ages
When does a boy become a man? Medieval "millennials" were just as hard to define as those of today
By Rachel Moss / History Today
June 8, 2018
A History of the World in 6 Kinds of Ink
From cave paintings to Kindle, our history is written in ink — adapted and reinvented to reflect, and influence, the needs of the day
By Lydia Pyne / History Today
May 23, 2018
Victorian Law Prevented a Widower From Marrying His Deceased Wife's Sister. Here's How That Changed
On the whole, despite the law, public opinion supported these marriages
By Karen Bourrier / History Today
April 11, 2018
The Idea of Drone Warfare Is Older Than You May Think
There is nothing new about uncrewed aircraft
By James Rogers / History Today
March 28, 2018
The Fight for British Women's Suffrage Was More Violent Than We Remember
Why is it so easy to forget an unsavory aspect of Britain’s recent past?
By Fern Riddell / History Today
February 6, 2018
How a Protest by Roman Women Helped Change an Ancient Law
Speeches were delivered for and against the bill. But the protesting women would not allow their voices to be silenced
By Laura McCormack / History Today
January 17, 2018
The Economic Lessons of Ancient Roman Moneylending
The Empire was very aware of the dangers of loans, which were at high interest rates
By Paul Kelly / History Today
December 6, 2017
What the Complicated History of Childbirth in the U.K. Reveals About the Home-or-Hospital Decision
Hospital or home birth has rarely been a simple choice
By Tania McIntosh / History Today
November 8, 2017
How Colonial Systems Hurt the Caribbean's Ability to Weather Hurricanes
In the wake of Hurricane Irma we are reminded that the effects of natural disasters are never entirely natural
By Oscar Webber / History Today
September 27, 2017
How an Outlaw Became the 'Turkish Lawrence of Arabia'
The dramatic life of the outlaw and special agent Eşref Bey epitomizes the end of the Ottoman Empire
By Benjamin C. Fortna / History Today
September 13, 2017
How Europe's Young Backpackers Forged a New Wave of International Collaboration
And saved priceless works of art, too
By Richard Ivan Jobs / History Today
August 2, 2017
The Greatest Library Before Alexandria
The bronze-age city of Mari was second only to Babylon, and the library of tablets it held offers rich insight into all aspects of an intricate political world
By Carly Silver/ History Today
July 19, 2017
What to Know About the 1967 Law Seen as a Milestone for Gay Rights in Britain
The law, hailed as landmark legislation on the road to gay equality, drew a mixed reaction from those it affected
By John-Pierre Joyce / History Today
June 21, 2017
What the Women of Britain's Early Factories Did About Work-Life Balance
As the Industrial Revolution wrought widespread social changes, female cotton industry workers’ lives changed dramatically
By Sue Wilkes / History Today
June 7, 2017
The Real History Behind Picasso's 'Guernica'
A flight of bombers pummeled the Basque town of Gernika for three hours on April 26, 1937
By Danny Bird / History Today
April 26, 2017
How Martin Luther Helped Invent Individual Freedom
The ideas set out by Martin Luther sparked a reformation in the idea of authority itself
By Frank Furedi / History Today
March 29, 2017
The Man Who Invented the Modern Bookstore
Above the entrance a plaque proclaimed the shop to be "The Cheapest Bookstore in the World"
By Robert Greer / History Today
March 15, 2017
The Concept of Facts Is Newer Than You Think
The rise of ‘the fact’ during the 17th century came at the expense of the power of authority
By David Wootton / History Today
February 15, 2017
How World War II Shaped the 'Special Relationship' Between the U.S. and U.K.
The much-vaunted 'special relationship' between Britain and the United States obscures another history of rivalry and suspicion between the two allies
By James Whitfield / History Today
February 1, 2017
How 'Lucy' Became Such a Famous Fossil
A compelling mix of science, history and culture continues to draw the public to the world’s most famous hominin
By Lydia Pyne / History Today
December 21, 2016
10 Historians Pick the Best History Books of 2016
From early Latin literature to an obituary for the E.U., ten historians recommend their best reads.
By History Today
December 7, 2016
10 Moments That Defined the Harlem Renaissance
It was the boom that changed African-American culture
By Cheryl A. Wall / History Today
November 9, 2016
How the 'Jungle' Migrant Camp Fits Into the History of Calais
Calais has come to represent the extremes of the current migrant crisis, in what is only the latest stage in its long history of migration — in both directions — across the Channel
By Fabrice Bensimon / History Today
October 26, 2016
The Long History Behind Territory Disputes in the South China Sea
Since the beginning of the 20th century, a tiny collection of islets and shoals has been the focus of disputes involving seven nations
By Bill Hayton / History Today
September 28, 2016
The Great Plague of 1665: Case Closed?
The presence of
Yersinia pestis
bacterium in skeletons found in a recently discovered plague pit proves that the Great Plague of 1665 was bubonic. Or does it?
By Lara Thorpe / History Today
September 14, 2016
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