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The Spanish Armada defeated in the English Channel in July 1588, by Hendrick Cornelis Vroom, c1600. (Picture by DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/Getty Images)

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Spanish Armada

Rags and riches: Enslaved people wash diamonds in Brazil, guarded by armed overseers, in a German engraving of 1828. Diamonds were discovered in Minas Gerais state in the late 17th century. (Picture by Alamy)

Brazil: a society shaped by slavery. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

"Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": Mike Leigh on a massacre

A wooden cross marks the spot, just over 20 miles west of Newcastle, where Oswald apparently raised his own cross before ambushing Cadwallon. If the Anglo-Saxon warlord's attack had failed, writes Edoardo Albert, England might now be a lot smaller. (Photo by Getty Images)

Hell in Heavenfield: the Anglo-Saxon battle "as important as Hastings". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged almost 700 messages during the Second World War. (Illustration by Hugh Cowling for BBC History Magazine)

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Combat helicopters fly over US troops during a search and destroy mission, South Vietnam. Despite their military might, argues Max Hastings, the Americans were doomed to fail during the Vietnam War. (Photo by Patrick Christain/Getty Images)

Max Hastings on Vietnam. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor visited the US on several occasions, where he was held in such high regard that he was dubbed the 'African Mahler'. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

My history hero: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London. "We're brought up on a whole ant-heap of myths about Napoleon. The apocryphal stories that swirl around him are legion," he says. (Photography by Frank Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Our illustration shows King Arthur leading his troops into battle. The legendary warlord's victories over Saxon invaders first appear in a 'history' written in the ninth-century north Wales. (Illustration by Georgie Gozem for BBC History Magazine)

The King Arthur delusion: a case of medieval fake news?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sir Walter Ralegh (c1554–1618, shown here in a painting attributed to William Segar) is often remembered as a favourite of Elizabeth I and an adventurer, yet he was also one of the most influential political philosophers of his era. (Photo by Alamy)

Walter Ralegh: the traitor who inspired Cromwell. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Circus performer Otto Witte, who in 1912 successfully pretended to be the new king of Albania. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

14 weird things that have happened in November through history

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a "giant of a book", and part of a new exhibition at the British Library. (Photo by Sam Lane Photography/British Library)

Watch: Highlights from the British Library's new Anglo-Saxon exhibition

JFK prepares to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. (Picture by Corbis/Getty Images)

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The ‘Pit Brow Lasses’ of 19th-century coal mines. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a "brute of a book", and part of a new exhibition at the British Library. (c) Sam Lane Photography/British Library)

"An absolute gem": Anglo-Saxons at the British Library. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The miller Samuel Wood, whose arm and scapula were torn off when entangled in a rope attached to a moving mill machinery in 1737. (Photo by Alamy)

7 bizarre cases in the history of medicine. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of Henry VIII with Prince Edward, his son by his third wife, Jane Seymour. If the future Henry IX had survived, there may have been no cause for Henry to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn in 1533, says Amy Licence. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

6 royal births that changed the world (or could have). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Ghent Altarpiece. (Image by Getty Images)

Who were the real monuments men of the Second World War?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

William the Conqueror and his escorts on horseback, detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Did William the Conqueror ever go to Hastings?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

8 unconventional royal wedding dresses in history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A vintage colour lithograph depicting King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. The battle of Bosworth (or Bosworth Field) was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York. (Photo by Getty Images)

The battle for Bosworth field: Historians react to decision to build on battlefield where Richard III died. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A 19th-century depiction of HMS Erebus in the ice, by François Etienne Musin. What exactly happened to the ship and its crew remains a mystery. (Picture by Alamy)

Michael Palin on HMS Erebus and the doomed Franklin Expedition of 1845. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

In c1500, the young Thomas Cromwell travelled from his humble Putney home to the great cities of Italy, as shown in our illustration. The connections he established on the Italian peninsula would prove key to his meteoric rise to power back in England. (Illustration by Sarah Young for BBC History Magazine)

Thomas Cromwell: the best Italian in all England. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Otto von Wächter, who went on the run after the Second World War.

Otto von Wächter: On the trail of the Nazi who disappeared. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The opening ceremony of London’s Tower Bridge on 30 June 1894. The bridge became a symbol of London’s importance as a global maritime hub (Photo by Francis Frith/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Britain's imperial landmarks: The empire on our doorsteps

Singer Paul Robeson rehearses at a piano in 1958. He had a unifying outlook, observing that "neither suffering nor compassion is confined to one face." (Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images)

My history hero: Paul Robeson (1898–1976). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Actors dressed as Tommies mark the centenary of the start of the battle of the Somme at Manchester Piccadilly station, July 2016. (Photo by Alamy)

First World War

Opinion: “The First World War centenary has been a lost opportunity”

Plaza de Armas in historic center of Cusco, Peru

ExploreCusco, Peru: Navel of the Incan world. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Crowds march through the streets of Chicago to hear Martin Luther King speak at the Illinois Rally for Civil Right on 21 June 1964

Seymour Hersh on the US civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.