Q&A

Travelling through time
How far back in time would I have to go until I couldn’t understand what people were saying?
Illustration by Glen McBeth
  If we’re just talking about England, and not Scotland, Wales or Ireland… well, it not only depends to which year you set the dial on your time machine, but where you go too. Local dialects could vary enormously. Strong local dialects with their own rich vocabularies remain well within living memory. After all, the modern English we know today is very much the creation of radio...
read more

Submit your Question

Scratching your head over a burning historic conundrum? Click here to submit your question and we'll get our esteemed panel of experts to answer it for you.

Search

Egyptian family trees
I have read that present-day Egyptians are not the descendants of the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids. Is this actually the case?
There has been a long-standing debate over the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians. However, there is no evidence in the skeletal record of any significant change in the mix of human types between the...
read more
The 'beautiful' game?
What was the 'battle of Highbury?'
  In November 1934, Italy, winners that summer of the second football World Cup, came to Highbury, Arsenal’s ground, to play England in a ‘friendly’ international. England had...
read more
Lincoln's death
Would modern medical practices and resources have been able to save Abraham Lincoln after his trip to the theatre?
  Abraham Lincoln was shot at point-blank range on 14 April 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, wielding a Philadelphia Derringer pistol. The bullet entered his head just under his left ear, went through...
read more
19th-century invention
What was a phenakistoscope?
  An invention in 1832 by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, the phenakistoscope was one of the first devices to create moving pictures. It consisted of two cardboard discs mounted on the same...
read more
18th-century slave uprising
What was the Stono Rebellion?
  In September 1739, 20 slaves, led by a man known as Jemmy, gathered on the banks of the Stono river near Charleston, in the colony of South Carolina. Carrying a banner bearing the word ‘...
read more
'Bad' King John?
Did King John ever display goodness?
  Part of the problem in answering this question lies in the fact that the popular stereotypes of John’s malicious character are close to the truth. Thus, unsurprisingly, medieval...
read more
Britain at war
I recently found an interesting statistic stating that the USA has been at war for 210 years of its existence. For how many years has Britain been at war?
  The United States declared its independence in 1776, making it 236 years old. The figure of 210 years of warfare is derived from the classification of the American-Indian Wars – a series...
read more
Nazi legal system
Are any laws made by the Nazi regime from 1933–45 still in use in Germany, or did the whole legal system start from scratch after 1945?
All legal systems tend to be rather organic in nature, building a framework of law through evolution and amendment rather than abrupt, wholesale change. And, surprisingly perhaps, given its turbulent...
read more
Dot dot dot
Samuel Morse invented the Morse code, but how did he do it, how long did it take, and how long was it before its acceptance?
A well-known painter and keen amateur inventor, Samuel Morse came up with the idea for an electric telegraph when he heard about electromagnetism on a voyage from France to New York in 1832. By 1837...
read more
Quick Query
What were Symmes’s Holes?
John Cleves Symmes Jr was an American soldier who fought with distinction against the British in the war of 1812. After the war, Symmes became the best-known proponent of the so-called ‘Hollow...
read more