HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-12-16T10:46:06.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Who was the first woman to climb Everest?
items: When did people start wearing sunglasses?
items: Where is William Shakespeare buried – and is there a curse on his grave?
items: The Gordons: Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution
items: Who was the Lindbergh baby?
items: What does Iron Curtain mean, and who popularised the term?
items: A history of Britain's folklore
items: Nixon in China: a week that changed the world
items: Roman invasion of Britain: did the Britons ignore them?
items: Why do we say 'shot across the bows'?

Who was the first woman to climb Everest?
type: item
date: 2023-05-24T13:43:27.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
description: Following in the footsteps of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who was the first woman to ascent the world's highest mountain?
encoded: “I was the 36th person to climb Everest,” was how Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei once understatedly described her 1975 ascent of the world’s highest mountain, when she became the first woman to reach the summit. Read more | 100 women who changed the world Throughout her mountaineering career, Tabei scaled new heights (pun intended). In 1969, she formed the first women’s climbing club in Japan – with the slogan “Let’s go on an overseas expedition by ourselves” – partly because of the way she had been treated by some male climbers. Some simply didn’t want to climb with her, while others claimed she was only doing so as a means of finding a husband. Ironically enough, she did actually marry a fellow climber, whom she met in 1965. During her Everest ascent, using the same route as Hillary and Norgay 22 years earlier, an avalanche struck the team’s camp, knocking Tabei unconscious for several minutes. She had to be dug out of the snow by a Sherpa in the party. Injured, she persisted with the ascent and, 12 days later, made it to the top of Everest alongside Sherpa Ang Tsering. Unknown to Junko Tabei – whose first thought on summiting Everest was reportedly "Oh, I don't have to climb anymore" – another expedition with female climbers was making an ascent from the other side. They made the top 11 days later. Tabei went on to achieve a host of other firsts – including, in 1992, becoming the first woman to ascend the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on every continent. This article was taken from History Revealed

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When did people start wearing sunglasses?
type: item
date: 2022-08-29T05:05:00.000Z
subject: General Early Modern
subject: General Modern
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Fashionable as well as functional - the history of tinted eyewear stretches back centuries…
encoded: Experiments with tinted eyewear stretch back for centuries, including lenses made of smoky quartz in 12th-century China and Georgian spectacles designed to correct vision impairment. Silent film stars are also said to have used them to shield their eyes from the harsh, powerful studio lighting. Read more | Fashions of the Second World War But the man credited with taking sunglasses from specialist equipment to affordable fashion accessory is founder of the Foster Grant eyewear company, Sam Foster. He began selling his mass-produced shades by the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1929, where they caught on thanks to the practical benefits and the allure of ‘Hollywood glamour’. Drawing on new technologies pioneered for US pilots, Ray-Ban made their distinctive ‘aviator’ sunglasses eight years later. By 1938, sunglasses were fashionable enough to be described as a “new fad for wear on city streets” by Life magazine. This article was taken from BBC History Revealed

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Where is William Shakespeare buried – and is there a curse on his grave?
type: item
date: 2022-04-22T12:00:28.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Death
description: On the banks of the river in Stratford-upon-Avon stands the burial place of the most famous playwright in the English language, William Shakespeare
encoded: Although there is no official record of his birth, we know that William Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April 1564 at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, so the date commonly attributed to his birthday is three days earlier, 23 April. It was on this same date in 1616 that Shakespeare died. He is buried at the same church in which he was baptised. It is not known what ended the Bard's life, but according to the diary of the church's vicar, John Ward, Shakespeare contracted a fever after a heavy night’s drinking with his friends Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton. Read more | 8 places that shaped the life of William Shakespeare What does it say on Shakespeare's grave? Before his death, Shakespeare penned his final verse: his own epitaph. Fearing that his body would be dug up – either by someone wishing to pilfer his grave for another body or by a souvenir hunter – his four-line rhyme is a curse on anyone who disturbs his remains. It reads, Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here: Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. It did the trick; his body has been untouched for almost 400 years. And lying next to him is his wife, Anne Hathaway – not to be confused with the Oscar-winning actress. This content first appeared in BBC History Revealed

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The Gordons: Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution
type: item
date: 2022-03-15T05:33:37.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
description: In 1965, Kim Gordon and his parents moved from Britain to China to see communism for themselves. At first, it was a time of excitement and adventure. But as the increasingly radical government grew more hostile to foreigners, everything changed. Arrested as they were leaving the country, the family was detained without trial and taken to a hotel room that would be Kim’s entire world for two years. Writer Monica Whitlock tells his story
encoded: When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon in July 1969, Kim Gordon was one of the few British schoolboys who knew nothing about it. Aged 13, he was mad about cars, planes and engines. But he was also shut away from the world, living in captivity in Beijing. For two long years, Room 421 of the Xin Qiao hotel was both home and prison for Kim and his parents, Eric and Marie. They had no access to a radio or telephone, newspapers or letters from home. Their relatives back in England had no idea where they were, nor even whether they were alive. Their room measured just four square metres – enough for a desk, a chair and three little beds, crammed close together. During those two years the family had no one to talk to but their interrogators, and no diversions except for a couple of books and some sheets of hotel writing paper. Read more | Reign of the Red Terror: Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution Fifty years later, as we sat in his Brighton flat, Kim showed me the creations he had improvised in those endless, empty days: tiny, intricate paper buses complete with upper decks; handwritten plays and diaries; and letters to friends back at primary school in East Finchley, north London – letters that would never be posted. Kim’s long adventure in China had begun in 1965. His parents were communists who, disenchanted by the Soviet variant of the ideology they encountered on family holidays to eastern Europe, had become excited by its younger version in China. There, Mao Zedong’s revolution was just 16 years old, and the Gordons wanted to see it first hand. Eric got a job as a copy editor at the Foreign Languages Press, and the family left their basement flat in London for a new life in Beijing, then known as Peking. Kim recalls a thrilling midwinter journey from Europe across Asia, pausing in ice-bound Irkutsk in Siberia. “The whole thing was a total adventure into this strange universe,” he says. In Beijing, the family moved into a vast hostel complex built to house thous…

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Who was the Lindbergh baby?
type: item
date: 2022-03-01T08:22:00.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Children
description: With the media in a frenzy, it would have been difficult to find someone in America in 1932 who didn’t know who the Lindbergh baby was…
encoded: Charles Lindbergh was a famous aviator – the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop. His flight aboard the Spirit of St Louis from New York to Paris in 1927 catapulted him into the public eye. In 1932, Charles was living a life of fame with his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and 20-month-old son, Charles Jr, in New Jersey. But on the evening of 1 March, Charlie was kidnapped. At 7.30pm, their nurse Betty Gow laid the toddler down to sleep in his crib. About two hours later, Charles heard a noise he thought sounded like a crate smashing, but thought nothing of it. Then at 10pm, the nanny, frantic with worry, reported that the baby had disappeared. In his bedroom, Charles found a handwritten, misspelled note: “Dear Sir! Have 50000$ redy 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills… We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police. The child is in gut care.” So began one of the most lurid cases in American criminal history. The kidnapping was front-page news, with Charles and Anne receiving many offers of help and sympathy, but amid massive publicity, crowds swiftly swarmed to the Lindbergh estate, destroying any chance of finding footprints. Amateur detectives, military men and even Chicago mobsters offered their assistance. President Hoover declared he would “move Heaven and Earth” to find the child, and even mobster Al Capone sent an offer of assistance from prison. Read more about Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic crossing An investigation was launched immediately but had little result. It was not until a retired New York schoolteacher, Dr John Condon, offered to act as a go-between that it seemed progress was being made. Condon met with a man called ‘John’ in a cemetery, who claimed to be holding Charlie and delivered the money – which had risen to $75,000. The child was never recovered however. Two months after the kidnapping, a truck driver stumbled upon the body of a toddler near the Lindberghs’ home. Half burie…

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What does Iron Curtain mean, and who popularised the term?
type: item
date: 2022-02-28T12:45:17.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
description: The political and ideological division between the Soviet Union and the West after WW2 split Europe in two
encoded: The barrier between the Soviet Union and the West after WW2 was the ‘Iron Curtain’, with the Communists on one side and the capitalist democracies on the other. The term referred to both the physical blockade that ran for thousands of miles across Europe – including the intimidating Berlin Wall – and the ideological barrier. Russia-Ukraine crisis: 9 milestone moments in history that explain today’s invasion Why is Ukraine being invaded, and what might Russia want from its neighbouring country? To make sense of the current crisis we must understand the history of the relationship between the two inextricably linked countries. Here, Professor Serhy Yekelchyk, an expert in Ukrainian history and Russian-Ukrainian relations, highlights nine milestone moments… The term was used long before the Cold War. Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of Belgium, used the term to describe the political division between Belgium and Germany in 1914, and several authors employed the phrase throughout the early 20th century. Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, was concerned about an iron curtain falling if Germany lost the war. Which statesman popularised the term 'Iron Curtain' in a 1946 speech? The term only became common parlance after a speech on 5 March 1946 by former British Prime Minster Winston Churchill. Churchill had been invited to speak at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, by President Harry Truman. In his speech, he condemned the expansionist policies of the Soviet Union: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.” It is unknown where Churchill picked up the phrase. He used it before the speech in telegrams and letters to Truman, including the ominous words in May 1945: “An iron curtain is drawn upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind.” Russian premier Joseph Stalin described the speech…

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A history of Britain's folklore
type: item
date: 2022-02-28T07:41:01.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: The British landscape is fertile with centuries of folklore, from sprites and giants to witches and ravens. These tales may bear little relation to reality – but, writes Francis Young, they continue to define British identities today
encoded: Somewhere near the town of Longtown on the banks of the river Esk, in one of the last parcels of land to be disputed between Scotland and England before the Union of Crowns of 1603, is the supposed site of the battle of Arthuret. Nothing to do with King Arthur (in spite of its name), the legendary battle is traditionally dated to AD 573, when local British king Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio was killed by a rival in a disastrous defeat. Gwenddoleu’s bard, Myrddin, was driven mad by the sight of the slaughter and fled into a nearby forest, where he lived as a wild man among the beasts. Yet by immersing himself in nature, Myrddin received the gift of prophecy. Today, he is better known by his anglicised name: Merlin, a composite figure constructed in the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth from Myrddin and another figure of Welsh legend named Ambrosius. Read more about British myths and legends Baselisks, manticores and more: medieval fantastic beasts Robin Hood: 7 myths about the legendary outlaw The real King Arthur and his Lancelot? At Arthuret, where Welsh-speaking forces clashed in a place later disputed between England and Scotland, the national identities that would one day make up Great Britain literally and symbolically converge. The battle gave birth to a truly British figure: Merlin was claimed equally in the Middle Ages by England, Wales, Scotland and Brittany. The prophet and enchanter would go on to become a repository for countless fantasies about magic and occult knowledge. In his incarnation as the wild man of the woods, Merlin even prefigures the Green Man, who often symbolises British folklore. With its intensely local character, folklore may seem a strange place to look for “Britishness” – a sense of common national identity shared by all the peoples of Great Britain – but Merlin is an example of a character who is both genuinely and distinctively British. Britain's origin myth In the fifth century, Britain, which had been united under the Romans (with the …

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Nixon in China: a week that changed the world
type: item
date: 2022-02-23T16:29:02.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: Following years of icy silence between the US and China, on 21 February 1972 president Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing for an unprecedented diplomatic mission. Professor Rana Mitter explores how the two sides viewed an encounter that augured China’s entrance onto the global stage
encoded: Listen to this article: The moment has been immortalised in music – and a breathtaking piece of stagecraft. In the opening scene of the 1987 opera Nixon in China the presidential plane, named “The Spirit of ’76”, lands onstage. The door opens and out steps the singer playing US president Richard Nixon, greeted by another as Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. When John Adams and Alice Goodman wrote Nixon in China, just a decade and a half after the events it depicted, they recognised that the meeting it recreated was the stuff of grand opera. Rather than merely two politicians coming face to face, it marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one – the moment when two great societies with very different systems finally engaged with each other after decades of silence. This year marks a half-century since Nixon’s visit. Between 21 and 28 February 1972, he met the ageing Mao Zedong, China’s paramount leader, and negotiated the first stages of the rapprochement between two countries that had no diplomatic ties in 1949, following Mao’s communist revolution. For Nixon, the mission came at a time when the complex problems of the Cold War were becoming more pressing. He had come to office in 1969 with impeccable qualifications as a Cold Warrior, having made his name as Eisenhower’s vice-president in the 1950s, sent out to do rhetorical battle with the Soviet Union. Yet as president he faced a range of difficulties. The US was in flames, its cities riven with unrest. Overseas, his country was caught in the murderous quagmire of the Vietnam War, unable to defeat its opponents or to withdraw honourably. Nixon had been elected in part because he claimed to have a plan to end that war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/GettyImages-1354435492_cmyk-ef3b527.png" width="621" height="521" alt="Photo of female soldiers of the People's Army of Vietnam" title="Female soldiers of the People’s Army of Vietnam operate howitzers, c1965. By then,…

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Roman invasion of Britain: did the Britons ignore them?
type: item
date: 2022-02-22T07:48:22.000Z
subject: Iron Age
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
description: To fight or capitulate. That was the choice facing the people of Britain when the Romans invaded in AD 43. Or was it? Miles Russell tells the story of a tribe that adopted an alternative strategy: to treat the legions with utter indifference
encoded: In 1936, a group of archaeologists working at Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, made a grisly discovery. Scattered near the east gate of this ancient hillfort were at least 52 Iron Age skeletons, some with horrific injuries to the head, back and shoulders. For the excavation director, Mortimer Wheeler, the cause of these terrible injuries was clear. He interpreted the skeletons as part of a war cemetery, bodies lying “in tragic profusion, displaying the marks of battle”. To him, these were the men and women of the Durotriges tribe, who had, in the first century AD, vainly defended their hilltop home against advancing Roman troops. “What happened here was plain to see,” Wheeler was later to write. The Roman infantry, under the covering fire of missiles, had “advanced up the slope, cutting its way from rampart to rampart, tower to tower” until they got into the area of the hillfort gateway. “Confusion and massacre dominated the scene,” he went on. “Men and women, young and old, were savagely cut down, before the legionaries were called to heel and the work of systematic destruction began.” Learn more about the Romans: A brief guide to ancient Rome and the Romans, plus 9 fascinating facts Everything you wanted to know about Roman Britain The Romans in Britain: exploitation or innovation? It was a dramatic and evocative description of a battle fought 1,900 years earlier – and one that proved extraordinarily persuasive. Mortimer Wheeler’s “war cemetery” became a 1930s media sensation – one that, until recently, appeared in pretty much every account of Roman Britain. For much of the 80 years or so since Wheeler’s team entered Maiden Castle hillfort, the Durotriges have been credited with leading armed resistance to the armies of Rome, operating from a series of strongly fortified hillforts across what is now Dorset and southern Wiltshire. Their story has been presented as a bitterly contested struggle against what may have been the first professional army of the ancient wor…

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Why do we say 'shot across the bows'?
type: item
date: 2022-01-11T06:06:00.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
description: Where does the popular saying 'shot across the bows' come from? And what does it mean?
encoded: To give someone a warning of imminent severe action is referred to as giving them a 'shot across the bows' – a phrase that, unsurprisingly, comes from the history of warfare. The ‘bows’ in question were found at the front of a ship, essentially the ‘shoulders’ of the vessel and the phrase first appeared during the 18th century. Sending a shot across the bows was a naval technique introduced at a time when the British navy ruled the seas and wars were fought not just on land but from the decks of mighty tall ships. The idea was not to actually fire on the ship, but to send a cannon ball near enough to signal them, force them to stop or let them know you’re ready for battle. 5 facts you (probably) didn’t know about Nelson’s navy In the days before radio, ships were identified by their ‘colours’, or flags that represented a vessel’s purpose and nationality. So if their colours weren’t flying, another ship was legally permitted to fire a harmless warning shot across the bows in order to confirm their identity. An early written use of the expression can be found in an 1839 edition of The Metropolitan Magazine, which read: “In a very brief space we neared our victim, a large merchantman, whose appearance promised at once an easy conquest and a rich booty. At a signal from Stamar, a shot was fired across her bows to bring her to. She immediately hoisted a white flag, and began to take in her sails.” The expression became commonly heard on board ships and the men working the guns were familiar with the order of firing near, not at, a ship. A shot across the bows continued well into the 20th century, although instead of being a first measure against an unknown ship, it was used only after attempts to contact the vessel on the radio proved unsuccessful. This content first appeared in BBC History Revealed

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