HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-04-22T10:57:50.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Singer, dancer, Nazi-fighter: how Josephine Baker became a WW2 heroine
items: In October 1939, two coffins were wheeled through Edinburgh draped in Nazi flags. But why?
items: Liquor, loot and death on the high seas: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the history of pirates
items: The final mystery of Richard III: how 21st-century science cracked a 500-year-old cold case
items: The radio revolution: how Britain found its frequency
items: The triumph of the Anglo-Saxons: how the kingdom of Mercia powered the rise of England
items: A medieval mystery: the green-coloured children found in an English village
items: The Victorians’ cocaine habit: why 19th-century Britain couldn't get enough of the 'miracle' drug
items: Why sex was a sin
items: A history of happiness: 5 life lessons from the past

Singer, dancer, Nazi-fighter: how Josephine Baker became a WW2 heroine
type: item
date: 2025-04-22T10:38:57.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
description: Today she’s widely remembered as a risqué entertainer – yet she was also involved in many of the earth-shaking events of her era. On the 50th anniversary of Josephine Baker’s death, Anna Maria Barry tells the story of a true 20th-century icon.
encoded: She was the granddaughter of a formerly enslaved woman, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Martin Luther King Jr on the frontline of the battle for civil rights. She was a chorus-line girl who helped redefine black artistry in the US and Europe. She danced nearly naked, but cloaked herself in mystery to spy for the Allies. She brought comedy to cabaret, but undertook the most serious and dangerous tasks for the French Resistance. She wowed Picasso, Hemingway and, ultimately, all of France. On the evening of 30 November 2021, some 46 years after her death, the streets of Paris were thronged with dignitaries and onlookers watching as jazz-age superstar Josephine Baker was inducted into the Panthéon – the mausoleum in which only the most distinguished sons and daughters of France are laid to rest – becoming the first black woman to receive this honour. How did a scandalous American dancer of the roaring twenties come to be celebrated and commemorated alongside the likes of Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie? Listen | Greg Jenner and guests discuss Josephine Baker on an episode of BBC Sounds' You’re Dead to Me Inauspicious beginnings This remarkable story began in St Louis, Missouri in 1906, with the birth of Freda Josephine McDonald. Her mother, Carrie, seems to have been adopted by a formerly enslaved couple of African and Native American descent. Her father’s identity has never been decisively confirmed. The family was not wealthy. “We were all so very hungry and cold at home,” she later recalled, explaining that she started dancing to keep warm. At eight years old she left school to work as a domestic servant for white families, who did not treat her kindly. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/GettyImages-56211819cmyk-9215d43.jpg" width="3438" height="2290" alt="Adorned with feathers for a show at Paris’s Folies Bergère music hall, c1925. Baker loved living in France, where racism was less overt than in the US. (Photo by …

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In October 1939, two coffins were wheeled through Edinburgh draped in Nazi flags. But why?
type: item
date: 2025-04-19T08:00:47.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: First World War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
description: Tens of thousands of British and German servicemen died on enemy soil during the two world wars. What happened to their remains, writes Tim Grady, tells us a great deal about the two nations’ evolving relationship after the conflicts
encoded: Thousands of people lined the streets of Edinburgh in October 1939 hoping to catch a glimpse of the day’s big event. Finally, the sound of an RAF pipe band could be heard, and a slow-moving funeral cortege came into view. Once safely inside the city’s Portobello Cemetery, a military chaplain gave a poignant eulogy to the assembled crowd, and local dignitaries laid wreaths for “two brave airmen”. Although rarely on this scale, such scenes were repeated time and again during the Second World War. What marked this ceremony out as somewhat different, however, was that the flags on the coffins were not Union Jacks, but Nazi swastikas. The mourners in the Scottish capital were well aware of this. After all, they had come to witness the burial of two Germans killed in a battle over the Firth of Forth five days earlier. International law stated the enemy needed to be “honourably buried”, but a grand military funeral was never a part of the deal. If it was not a question of legality, then, what had encouraged such fanfare in Edinburgh? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/GettyImages-78953429-752aa2d.jpg" width="2684" height="1788" alt="Paying respect at the British Military Cemetery in Hamburg in 1957, a site where more than 2,500 Commonwealth troops are buried." title="Paying respect at the British Military Cemetery in Hamburg in 1957, a site where more than 2,500 Commonwealth troops are buried. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The real motive, it seems, was to be found over in Nazi Germany. During the first days of the conflict, several British airmen had lost their lives in a series of audacious RAF raids on Germany’s North Sea ports. Determined to showcase an honourable side, the Nazi regime staged its own elaborate funerals in the coastal town of Wilelmshaven, Lower Saxony. A naval band, floral tributes and military pallbearers were all present as the British dead were laid to rest. After the Germans had thrown down this mortuary gaun…

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Liquor, loot and death on the high seas: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the history of pirates
type: item
date: 2025-04-16T08:00:48.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Pirates
description: Sophie Nibbs shines a light on the murky world of the bandits who marauded the high seas in the 17th and 18th centuries
encoded: 1. Pirates followed strict rules Despite their fearsome reputations, these maritime bandits often signed up to stringent codes of conduct. Bartholomew Roberts (1682–1722), a well-known and brutal Welsh pirate, enforced rules for his crew, aiming to ensure that things ran smoothly on board. He issued a ban on gambling, which was likely to spark conflict, and lights were to be put out at 8pm. Anyone who wanted to stay awake and continue drinking after that time was required to do so on deck. Read more | The most famous and despicable pirates from history The code also dictated that each member of the pirate crew should receive a fair share of the loot. Meanwhile, compensation was paid for injuries, encouraging a sense of loyalty and fairness. The first article of his code states that: “Every man has a vote in affairs of moment; has equal title to the fresh provisions, or strong liquors, at any time seized, and may use them at pleasure, unless a scarcity makes it necessary, for the good of all, to vote a retrenchment.” Anyone found to have violated the rules could find themselves marooned or even killed. It was often down to the rest of the crew to decide on a fitting punishment for a fellow pirate’s crimes. Listen | Dr Rebecca Simon responds to your questions on the 17th-century golden age of piracy. Plus, how accurate are pop culture portrayals of pirates? 2. They didn’t make captives walk the plank Pirates dealt with their captives in various practical or brutal ways – killing them outright, enslaving them or marooning them on deserted islands. Sometimes those captured would be spared if they had useful skills or a high ransom value. In common with many of the dramatic or fantastical ideas we hold about pirates today, the myth of enemies being made to walk the plank seems to have its roots in Captain Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates (1724), a collection of biographies detailing the lives and dramatic tales of infamous characters. Its mysterious author – th…

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The final mystery of Richard III: how 21st-century science cracked a 500-year-old cold case
type: item
date: 2025-04-11T11:43:50.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
description: Turi King led the verification team that worked on Richard III’s rediscovered remains. Here, on the 10th anniversary of the king’s reburial service, she reveals how science finally solved a 500-year-old cold case
encoded: History isn't often made in car parks. Yet in the early autumn of 2012, something remarkable was in the air – or, should I say, under the ground. On Wednesday 5 September, 13 years ago, an archaeologist and osteologist called Jo Appleby could be found crouching over a skeleton in what had once been the medieval church of the Greyfriars in Leicester – now an unremarkable car park. Jo was clad head-to-toe in white overalls, wearing a face mask, and giving the human remains below her every last drop of her attention. The reasons for Jo’s great care would soon become all-too evident. The skeleton over which she crouched had lain under the soil for more than 500 years – and it would yield one of the most remarkable historical discoveries of the 21st century. Jo could tell a few things about the skeleton as she, bone by bone, brought it into the light. This appeared to be a male, with injuries incurred at or around the time of death – injuries that could have been sustained in battle. He was aged in his twenties or thirties. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/GettyImages-160632583cmyk-7409349.jpg" width="4400" height="2355" alt="Dr Jo Appleby points to an image of the skull of Britain's King Richard III, during a press conference at the university in central England, on February 4, 2013. (Photo by Andrew Cowie/AFP via Getty Images)" title="Dr Jo Appleby points to an image of the skull of Britain's King Richard III, during a press conference at the university in central England, on February 4, 2013. (Photo by Andrew Cowie/AFP via Getty Images)" /> Yet it was when Jo uncovered the spine – and noticed that it was curved – that, as she later told me, the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end. Could this skeleton be the remains of Richard III, the monarch so famously described by Shakespeare as a “bunch-back’d toad”? It looked promising. But we had to prove it. Quiz | Richard III quiz: how much do you know about the last …

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The radio revolution: how Britain found its frequency
type: item
date: 2025-03-28T14:27:48.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: When radios first appeared in British homes in the early 20th century, one thing soon became clear: domestic life would never be the same again. Beaty Rubens tracks Britons’ reaction to this extraordinary new technology via seven cartoons.
encoded: Radio silence This double cartoon from 1923 laments the impact of the wireless on the art of conversation Listening to the radio today is so familiar an occupation that we easily forget it was once a new technology. Like most new technologies, early radio stirred massive public excitement but also fear about its disruptive potential. What exactly was radio – or ‘wireless’, as it was then called? Who was it for? Where would it happen? As the first ever form of home-based mass entertainment, anxieties ran particularly high about radio’s impact on the cherished traditions of domestic life. How, for example, might it affect conversation? Cartoons offer us a fascinating insight into how interwar Britons ad- dressed questions like these. In the first panel of this before-and-after cartoon from 1923, guests at a Victorian dinner-party are engaged in animated conversation. In the second, each of them is isolated in their own world, all interaction stifled as they listen to the radio. In the early days, problems with amplification meant that almost all listening was through head- phones, making them the must-have accessory of the 1920s, just as they are again today. Even the butler is wearing a set, on the verge of catastrophe as he stretches the wires to their full extent whilst carrying out his duties. These images represent a wealthy fictional gathering, but real-life versions were soon playing out in homes across the country. Radio uptake was sensationally swift: when broadcasting began in 1922, just 150,000 people were able to listen; by 1939 the number had risen to 34 million. Of course, such debates are not only a thing of the past, a forgotten feature of the lives of our grandparents and great-grandparents. Switch the gadget to mobile devices and this cartoon could as easily be a commentary on the ‘lost art’ of conversation at the 21st-century family dinner-table. Is it a telephone, dear? Many older Britons were utterly befuddled by the strange new talking gadget in …

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The triumph of the Anglo-Saxons: how the kingdom of Mercia powered the rise of England
type: item
date: 2025-03-27T09:00:39.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Battered by the Vikings, outshone by King Alfred, Mercia has long been painted as the also-ran of the Anglo-Saxon world. Yet, writes Max Adams, this mighty Midlands kingdom was at the very heart of the emergence of England.
encoded: Alfred and Bede. There are the two figures who tower over the first half-millennium of the history of Anglo-Saxon England. There’s a reason for that, of course: they wrote this history. The Venerable Bede chronicled the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxons and the triumph of the kingdom of Northumbria over its southern foes up to about 730. As for King Alfred, it was during his reign that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle documented the rise of Wessex and his own stunning victory over the Great Viking Army in the ninth century. Seen through the prism of those writings, Northumbria and Wessex very much dominate the stories we tell about the Anglo-Saxon world before 900. When we think of the great milestones of early English history, we invariably think of the two kingdoms that occupied the northern third and south-western corner of what’s now England. Read more | Alfred the Great and Edington: how the King of Wessex became great So where does that leave the third great kingdom of the Anglo-Saxon era – Mercia? Without a chronicle to match those produced by Bede and the scribes of Alfred, Mercia’s story can be pieced together only in fragments, like odd strips of film left on the cutting-room floor of history. Largely for this reason, the kingdom that dominated swathes of south-central Britain from the end of Roman rule to the unification of England has been relegated almost to a footnote. Yet when these strips are assembled, they reveal a truly remarkable story – one every bit as thrilling and consequential as those of Wessex and Northumbria. From obscure origins, in the early seventh century Mercian warlords began to assert their independence from their neighbours, and went on to dominate English politics, culture and trade. By the eighth century, they were making waves in continental Europe; one even styled himself Rex Britanniae: King of Britain. And they lie at the very heart of Anglo-Saxon history. To fully appreciate why Mercia became such an early medieval po…

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A medieval mystery: the green-coloured children found in an English village
type: item
date: 2025-03-27T09:00:28.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: In the 12th century, two strange children suddenly appeared in a Suffolk village. Why, the villagers wondered, were they completely green? The story of the otherworldly children of Woolpit has long been treated as folklore – but, as John Clark explains, the tale may not be as fanciful as it seems...
encoded: The children were green. There were other strange things about the boy and girl found in a Suffolk field on a summer's day in the middle of the 12th century, but it was their hue that was most striking. “In the shape of their whole bodies they were like other people,” wrote the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, “but they differed in the colour of their skin from all the mortal inhabitants of our world; for the whole surface of their skin was... a green colour.” The essentials of the story run as follows. In a field in Woolpit, a Suffolk village between Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, harvesters came upon two terrified children apparently emerging from a pit. Their skin was, in the words of Ralph of Coggeshall, “prassinus color” – the dark green of leek leaves. They were strangely dressed, spoke an unknown language, and did not understand English. The villagers quickly decided to make the pair somebody else’s problem. But, rather than taking them to the local landlord, the Abbot of Bury in Bury St Edmunds, they led the youngsters some 8 miles north to Wykes, the manor house of Sir Richard de Calne in the parish of Bardwell. Not much is known about Sir Richard, but he seems to have taken ownership of Wykes by 1135, and died around 1188. The de Calne family also owned various other properties in Suffolk and Essex. Sir Richard took in the children. They were clearly starving, but for some days they refused all the food they were offered. By chance, they then saw some fresh-cut bean- stalks being brought into the house, and gestured eagerly that they wanted the beans. A bystander had to show the children how to open the pods to extract the beans, which “they ate... with great joy, and would touch no other food at all for a long time”. Read more | Discover how folk tales have shaped British identities Feeling off colour The boy was sickly, and died soon after arriving at Wykes. But the girl, wrote Ralph, “becoming used to all sorts of food... totally lost her leek-green col…

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The Victorians’ cocaine habit: why 19th-century Britain couldn't get enough of the 'miracle' drug
type: item
date: 2025-03-20T15:45:56.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: In the 19th century, a magic new drug took the medical community by storm, riding a wave of scientific endeavour. But, writes Douglas Small, it wasn’t long before the dark side of this miraculous substance began to emerge
encoded: On a drab January day in 1890, journalist Marian von Glehn made her way through the "roar and rattle" of the City of London. Her destination, squeezed in among densely packed warehouses in the Moorfields district, was a massive, grubby, utilitarian building: the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital. Behind that unpromising facade, though, von Glehn was about to witness a miracle of modern medicine. Writing for The Leisure Hour magazine, she recounted seeing a small group of nervous patients gathering outside an operating theatre. Surrounded by powerful gas lamps, reflectors and rows of “coloured phials that would have delighted the eyes of a Dutch painter”, the hospital’s nurses began to drift quietly among their charges. Into the eyes of these patients, nurses dripped a “newly discovered... magic drug” – one that would “deaden and allay the pain” of imminent operations and “inspire their patients with courage and confidence”. The miraculous-seeming substance being administered was cocaine – and it soon captured the imagination of the Victorian public in a way that few other drugs have done, either before or since. Numb luck Cocaine was first isolated and extracted from the leaves of coca plants, traditionally cultivated on the slopes of the Andes, in 1855. It gained its well-known common name in 1860. However, the drug’s discovery initially passed largely unnoticed outside the specialised realms of organic chemistry. For the first few decades, one medical writer recounted, cocaine seemed to be nothing more than an “obscure [and] useless alkaloid”. Then, in 1884, cocaine came to the attention of medical professionals worldwide when Karl Koller, a trainee ophthalmologist in the eye surgery department of Vienna General Hospital, realised that applying the compound to the surface of the eye completely blocked any sensation of pain. That discovery heralded the advent of a completely new class of medications: local anaesthetics. For the first time it became possible to under…

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Why sex was a sin
type: item
date: 2025-03-19T08:30:08.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Celibacy barely merits a mention in the Bible. Yet, by the early Middle Ages, it was being celebrated as a shortcut to a seat next to God. Diarmaid MacCulloch explores Christianity’s long love affair with sexual abstinence
encoded: Christianity has always been a religion of family values, right? Not if you know anything about its history. For centuries, Christians valued celibacy – that is, abstention from sex and rejection of family life – well above wife and kids. Celibates, especially professed monks and nuns, would get to heaven more quickly than the married. It was possible to rescue married people from marriage if they made the turn into monastic life. Listen to this horrible tale from one of the leaders in early monasticism, the fourth-century monk John Cassian. In his book of instruction, The Institutes, Cassian reminisces about Patermutus (‘the silent father’), a wealthy man who wanted to embrace the religious life and brought his eight-year-old son along when he entered a monastery. The abbot was having none of this and, seeking to sever the biological bond, separated father and son in different institutions. Patermutus was then sadistically tested. He heard that his little son was “purposely neglected”, “clothed in rags” and left filthy, even randomly beaten until he cried, just to emphasise that the natural father should not intervene in this cruelty. The story shockingly culminates in a ritually enacted parody of the Old Testament patriarch Abraham offering his son Isaac for a sacrificial death. The abbot ordered Patermutus to throw his son into the river, and the pair were actually at the water’s edge before two strategically placed monks intervened to tell the father he had passed the test of loyalty to his new vocation. Like Isaac, the boy did not die, but now Patermutus had lost everything from the past. He was no longer even a parent. Cassian’s readers were expected to commend the tale of Patermutus and his little son, because Patermutus had become a celibate. From at least the fourth century, celibate men and women – hermits, monks and nuns who had rejected involvement in any form of sex – were seen as spiritually superior to conventional biological families which arise from…

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A history of happiness: 5 life lessons from the past
type: item
date: 2025-03-07T13:32:18.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: What can history teach us about how to find joy? Katie Barclay shares five lessons from the past about the pursuit of happiness
encoded: 1. Don’t bank on money alone The subject of whether wealth can bring true happiness has been passionately debated across the centuries. Money can’t buy you happiness, it’s often said. But did our ancestors agree? That depends on who you ask, and on how we define and measure happiness – something that has varied across time, cultures and languages. Is it just a state of mind, describing the way we feel? Or does happiness require us to be healthy, wealthy and wise? Interestingly, research has shown that wealth is actually a pretty good predictor of happiness, but throughout history people have cautioned against relying on material accumulation to achieve a blissful life. Historical studies of happiness have often been guided by the ancient Greek term eudaimonia, meaning the condition of living well – and societies and individuals able to live well enjoy more opportunities for happiness. Many ancient Greeks were, though, sceptical of the idea that happiness was achievable in this life, associating that state solely with the afterlife. In a (likely fictional) conversation in the sixth century BC, the legendarily wealthy Lydian king Croesus asked Athenian lawmaker Solon whether he had met anyone better off than him. Solon listed several men who lived honourable and sacrificial lives, dying for their people. When Croesus asked whether his own eudaimonia – his economic success and luxurious lifestyle – meant nothing, Solon replied that you could not judge whether a person was happy until they had ended their life well, emphasising virtuous living over material pleasures. The philosopher Democritus similarly argued that “both happiness and misfortune pertain to the soul. Happiness does not reside in cattle or gold,” advising people to put aside their worldly concerns. In contrast, 18th-century American revolutionaries placed the “pursuit of Happiness” at the heart of their vision for a new nation, writing it into the Declaration of Independence. With the rapid growth in wea…

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