Davy’s lamp described
The first effective miners' safety lamp was unveiled on November 9th 1815.
History Today
Yemen’s Endangered Treasures
The current conflict in southern Arabia is threatening one of the most remarkable sites of the region’s pre-Islamic civilisations.
The Past Made Flesh
Jerome de Groot muses on how authors of historical fiction try to flesh out the bare bones of history, drawing on old and new works.
Peter the Great's Special Book
The reforming Tsar sought to westernise his empire, yet in 1723 he published an uncompromising reassertion of his absolutist doctrine, which has traditionally marked Russia’s national consciousness.
Richard Burton dies in Trieste
The explorer died on October 20th 1890.
RAF Display, 1934
Roger Hudson describes advances in British military aviation technology in the years before the Second World War.
Technology Capital Then and Now
Britain’s Industrial Revolution is most closely associated with the Midlands and the North. But the capital was also a centre of innovation and enterprise, as David Waller explains.
Slavery, Women’s Suffrage and the American Civil War
As calls for women’s suffrage gained momentum following the Civil War, an uncomfortable racial faultline emerged dividing white suffragists from their African-American sisters.
Premiere of The Great Dictator
Chaplin's celebrated film first appeared on 15 October 1940.
The Media’s First Moral Panic
Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was blamed for a spate of suicides during the ‘reading fever’ of the 1700s. It set a trend for manufactured outrage that is with us still.