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8 weird stories from the Space Age: from hungry tortoises to gorilla suits
As the Artemis II mission prepares to send humans around the moon, Jonathan Wright explores the stranger side of space history – from UFO sightings to Cold War curiosities and beyond
Exploring space is a serious business. To use the term employed by Tom Wolfe in his 1979 book about the first US test pilots to enter astronaut training, you need the “right stuff” to sit atop an enormous firework leaving the protection of our atmosphere. But space travel is also a human endeavour. In the heavens as on Earth, that means it throws up stories that can be bizarre, funny or melancholy. As Nasa prepares to send astronauts back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time since 1972, here are eight strange-but-true tales from the ongoing history of the Space Age. 1. Ballistic legacy At the end of the Second World War, the USSR and the US competed to snaffle up as much German rocketry expertise and kit as possible. So it was that, despite his Nazi past, V-2 co-designer Wernher von Braun became chief architect of the Apollo programme’s Saturn V rocket. Less well remembered is the role of the V-2 itself in space exploration. In 1945, US Army Special Mission V-2 recovered parts and equipment needed to make the missiles from an underground factory in eastern Germany. Subsequently, much of the haul was taken to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, where initial work resulted in the assembly of 25 rockets. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/1aGettyImages-544605263-d284276-e1775049918462.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A mid-20th-century photograph of a suited man seated at a desk, holding a pen and looking towards the camera. In front of him are several model rockets and a black rotary telephone. Behind him, a large illustration shows a spacecraft flying past the moon." title="Wernher von Braun - director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center" /> The first flights from the US followed in the spring of 1946. By October, the grandly named Upper Atmosphere Research Panel was expert enough in launching missiles to use one to capture the first photograph of the Earth from space. A terror weapon had found a more noble purpose. 2. The dog who died In the early years of spaceflight, it was far too dangerous to send humans into the great beyond. Instead, scientists sent animals. As early as 1946, the Americans blasted fruit flies into space. Monkeys and mice followed in their wake. But perhaps the most famous creature to leave Earth was Laika (‘Barker’). A stray mongrel, she was taken off the streets of Moscow by biologists working for the city’s Aviation Institute – the idea being to find animals that were friendly yet also tough, streetwise. And female, so they wouldn’t need to cock their legs to pee. On 3 November 1957, Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth. Listen now | Animals in space: the creatures who paved the way for human travel beyond Earth Sadly, at a time when re-entry technology had yet to be developed, she died of hyperthermia. But her journey aboard Sputnik 2, nicknamed ‘Muttnik’ by the US press, captured the public’s imagination. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2GettyImages-515031406-bdd929d-e1775048742214.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph of a small dog seated inside a cramped, capsule-like apparatus. The dog is strapped into a harness, with its head and front paws visible through an open front panel. The surrounding structure appears metallic and enclosed, with wires, bolts and curved casing." title="Laika, Russian Astro Dog" /> 3. Space pup détente Unlike the ill-fated Laika, Belka (‘Squirrel’) and Strelka (‘Little Arrow’) survived spaceflight. In August 1960, aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2, the two dogs circled the Earth for 27 hours in the company of 40 mice, a couple of rats, a grey rabbit and some flies. The serious point of the exercise was to understand how time in zero gravity would affect the creatures. Strelka had six puppies. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev sent one of the puppies, Pushinka, ‘Fluffy’, to President John F Kennedy. Once the FBI had checked out Pushinka for surveillance bugs, she joined the First Family. Less suspicious was the Kennedys’ pet dog Charlie, who fathered four ‘pupniks’ in June 1963. Although JFK wrote to Khrushchev to thank him for the gift, he was allergic to Pushinka, who made him sneeze and brought him out in a rash. 4. Aliens ahoy? Considering the rigorous psychological evaluations required to become an astronaut, it’s unsurprising that few spacefarers have reported seeing UFOs – when they have sighted odd objects, they have offered rational explanations for what they saw. The template for this approach was set by astronaut Jim McDivitt. Read now | How UFOs conquered the world – without firing a shot Aboard Gemini IV in 1965, he reported spotting an object that was “like a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it”. He never saw this as an example of an alien visitation. Rather, he thought he was probably looking at a piece of ice or insulation that had broken off his craft. That hasn’t stopped more lurid stories of UFO sightings spreading, including one involving Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 and fake “secret moon transcripts”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/62HJCPDX-9d175f4-e1775049594902.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colour photograph showing two astronauts seated side by side inside a spacecraft cockpit. Both wear white space suits and large, clear-visor helmets, with one astronaut in the foreground looking down and the other slightly behind, facing forward. The interior is tightly packed with metal panels, wiring and controls, conveying the confined, technical environment of an early space mission." title="Astronauts Edward H. White II (left) and James A. McDivitt inside the Gemini IV spacecraft wait for liftoff. The objective of the Gemini IV mission was to evaluate and test the effects of four days in space on the crew, equipment and control systems. Pilo" /> 5. The tortoises who survived The Nasa astronauts heading for the moon in April will be following not just their predecessors aboard Apollo missions, but those who journeyed on the Soviet Union’s Zond 5 spacecraft. This left the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 15 September 1968. Its payload included fruit fly eggs, plants and two tortoises, the first creatures to fly beyond Earth orbit and circle the moon. They returned on 21 September 1968. Despite splashing down in the Indian Ocean rather than landing back in Kazakhstan as planned, the tortoises lived through the experience, albeit they had lost 10 per cent of their bodyweight and were subsequently dissected. The mission was also notable in providing high-quality photographs of the Earth from 90,000km out in space. 6. Posthumous Explorer The death of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1991 robbed the world of the Space Age’s greatest optimist, a man whose work suggested humanity’s future would be spent zipping around the cosmos. And, in the case of James T Kirk, fighting aliens, bickering with his crewmates and kissing any willing women in his vicinity. Boldly going where few have gone before, Roddenberry requested his remains be sent into space. In 1992, his wish was partially honoured when astronaut James Weatherbee carried a portion of Roddenberry’s ashes with him aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Although the remains were brought back to Earth, this is widely thought to have been the first space ‘burial’. Founded in 1994, Houston-based “memorial spaceflight” specialists Celestis have turned off-Earth undertaking into a business by buying ‘secondary payload’ slots on launch vehicles. They have twice taken small portions of Roddenberry’s ashes aloft, most recently in January 2024 when Roddenberry and his wife, actor Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, were among those fired into deep space as part of the maiden mission of the Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle – marketed as the Enterprise Flight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/102WD95N4-c2109b7-e1775049710517.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A night-time photograph of a rocket launching from a pad, brightly illuminated as flames and exhaust billow beneath it. Tall gantry structures and towers frame the rocket, while thick clouds of smoke spread across the ground. The surrounding area is dark, with the launch creating a dramatic contrast against the night sky." title="A portion of Gene Roddenberry's cremated remains were fired into space as part of the inaugural Vulcan Centaur launch in January 2024 (Photo by Alamy)" /> 7. Sitting in a tin can, far above the sky At midnight on 31 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to be a sovereign state. This put cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev in a tricky situation. The country that had put him aboard the Mir space station no longer existed and nobody seemed in any massive hurry to bring him home. Another issue was Russia’s dire financial situation. While other countries paid for places on missions to and from the station, Krikalev stayed in situ. Plus, had he left, the station would likely have had to be abandoned because it would have been without a flight engineer. Read now | The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the moon Ten months after he had departed terra firma, a man dubbed “The Last Soviet Citizen” at last went home. His mission had lasted twice as long as planned. But he doesn’t hold the record for the longest single stay in space. This belongs to Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days aboard Mir in 1994–95. Returning to Earth, he said he wanted to prove humans could cope with travelling to Mars. 8. Silly ape In 2016, future senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly sent a gorilla suit to his identical twin brother, Scott. An unusual gift, especially as Scott was at this point resident on the International Space Station and the suit was smuggled aboard via a SpaceX cargo mission. The result of this tomfoolery was a viral video showing Scott, dressed as an ape, chasing around British astronaut Tim Peake. The Kellys built on a rich tradition of taking contraband into space that dated back to March 1965, when Gemini III astronaut John Young carried a corned beef sandwich into orbit. According to Young, it seemed like “a fun idea at the time”. Nasa bigwigs, worried about crumbs damaging delicate equipment, were not amused. Lead image by Nasa/Ben Smegelsky
History's most notorious crime scenes: from Lizzie Borden's lair to HH Holmes's 'murder castle'
What is it about places marked by murder and violence that continue to pique our interest, long after the crimes have been committed? Caitlin Blackwell Baines uncovers the history behind some of the world's most morbid locations – from a crumbling Slovakian castle to Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel
1. Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, United Kingdom Founded in AD 597, Canterbury Cathedral is Britain’s oldest and most important religious complex: the ‘mother church’ of the Anglican faith and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. With its soaring 250-foot central tower and 13,000 square feet of stained-glass windows, the cathedral draws more than a million visitors each year – some who come to worship, others simply to marvel at its serene majesty. Such a setting would seem an unlikely place for a murder, but, ironically, that murder has been a big part of the pull for the past 850 or so years. The victim was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, on the night of 29 December 1170, was hacked to death in the cathedral’s northwest transept. Once a royal favourite – Henry II’s chancellor and closest confidant – Becket ran afoul of the monarch soon after being ordained in 1162. By refusing to uphold the king’s authority over that of the church in the following years, the archbishop effectively sealed his fate. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/1-GettyImages-2188130261-ad7bb3e-e1773932992660.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A medieval illuminated manuscript shows three armored knights striking a kneeling, haloed cleric at an altar. The cleric prays as blood streams from his head. A chalice and open book sit on the altar, and the background is filled with ornate red and gold patterns" title="A medieval manuscript illumination depicts Thomas Becket’s gruesome demise. The archbishop was brutally killed in Canterbury Cathedral, turning a place of worship into a crime scene" /> “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry is reported to have ranted to his courtiers. Interpreting this as a kind of kingly hit order, four of his knights stole away under the cover of night, travelling in secret from Normandy to Canterbury, where they accosted Becket as he entered the cathedral. At first, the knights attempted to arrest the cleric, but when he refused to accompany them, a violent scuffle broke out. As Becket desperately clung to a column, the knights slashed at him with their swords, eventually striking a fatal blow to the top of his head, spraying blood and gore across the cathedral floor. The gruesome crime shocked the whole of Christendom, quickly transforming victim into martyr, and crime scene into pilgrimage site. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2-GettyImages-999672134-08df4e0-e1773934721665.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A ruined stone castle stands on a rocky hilltop above a dense green forest, lit by warm sunrise or sunset light. Rolling hills fade into the distance under a soft pastel sky" title="A panoramic shot of Čachtice Castle, western Slovakia. Now a crumbling ruin, the castle was supposedly the site of dozens of murders perpetrated by Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. Čachtice Castle, Slovakia You’ve probably heard of Castle Dracula, the seat of the titular character in Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel. But have you heard of Čachtice Castle? It is the setting for a real-life horror story far more frightening than anything dreamed up in Gothic fiction. Now a crumbling ruin, teetering on a rocky outcrop in the Trenchin region of western Slovakia, the castle was once home to Countess Elizabeth Báthory – purportedly the most prolific female serial killer in history. Čachtice Castle began its existence as a 13th-century fortress built to defend the western border of the Kingdom of Hungary. Over the centuries, it was expanded and transformed into a stately home. Passing through several hands, it eventually came into the possession of nobleman Francis Nádasdy II, who, in 1575, gifted it to his 14-year-old bride, Elizabeth Báthory, as a wedding present. By all accounts, the marriage of Francis and Elizabeth was a happy one. Home life at Čachtice Castle, on the other hand, was not exactly the picture of domestic bliss. With Francis frequently away on military campaigns against the Ottoman Turks, Elizabeth was left behind to manage the family’s household and vast estates, and in her husband’s absence, the countess seems to have taken up an unusual hobby: the torture and murder of her servants. Her many victims – a revolving door of peasant girls recruited from nearby villages – were variously cut, burnt, bitten, beaten, starved and even frozen to death. Posthumous rumours that Báthory bathed in the blood of her prey to preserve her youth have never been proven, but the available evidence suggests that her actions went far beyond that of a harsh mistress. Read more | Elizabeth Báthory: a 17th-century 'serial killer' She was a sadistic killer whose position of power and relative isolation at Čachtice Castle allowed her to operate unchecked for over two decades. During this time, she is estimated to have killed as many as 600 young women and girls. Had the cruel countess stuck to her original victim pool of poor servants, she may have escaped capture. Indeed, it was only when several young noblewomen invited to the castle to attend a gynaeceum (finishing school) went missing that the authorities finally took notice. In December 1610, Čachtice Castle was raided on the orders of King Matthias II. Báthory was seized during a post-Christmas feast – and not, as it was later claimed, in the middle of a murder. Owing to her high station, however, she managed to avoid trial (and inevitable execution) and was instead placed on house arrest in her castle. She died there four years later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/3-GettyImages-167652325-3e2d3aa-e1773934794798.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Historic three‑storey corner building with wrought‑iron balconies and arched windows in a busy street scene" title="The present-day LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans. The original building burned down in 1834, revealing evidence of Delphine LaLaurie’s horrific torture of enslaved people (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. LaLaurie Mansion, New Orleans, United States Sadistic slave-owning socialite Delphine LaLaurie might just be New Orleans’ answer to Countess Báthory. If ever you travel to the city, you will inevitably hear of the notorious madame and her house of horrors. It is a stately three-storey French empire-style townhouse located on Royal Street in the heart of the historic French Quarter, the city’s main tourist district. On 10 April 1834, the mansion caught fire, attracting a large crowd of curious onlookers. At the time, the LaLaurie Mansion was renowned for its lavish interiors and decadent soirees – as well as for something more sinister. Rumour had it that the mistress of the manor treated her slaves exceptionally cruelly – which spoke volumes, given that most slave-owners thought nothing of whipping their workers at the time. These rumours would soon prove to be true. When concerned members of the community entered the house to help extinguish the flames, they made a horrific discovery. According to reports, behind the padlocked door of the attic, they found “seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to another”. So shocking was the scene that the once-respected society hostess was run out of town by an angry mob. Nearly 200 years later, the legend of Madame LaLaurie lives on as one of the darkest chapters in the city’s pre-Civil War history. Though privately owned and publicly inaccessible, the present-day LaLaurie Mansion (rebuilt three years after the fire) still manages to draw hordes of tourists, who come to gawk at its paradoxically elegant exterior. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/4-GettyImages-117081718-8c2be8c-e1773938765180.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="Black‑and‑white photo of a worn brick building with an arched passageway and a sign reading ‘Millers Court." title="The exterior of 13 Miller’s Court, Whitechapel, c1900. In 1888, the body of Mary Jane Kelly – the last of Jack the Ripper’s ‘canonical five’ victims – was discovered inside (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. 13 Miller's Court, London, United Kingdom No list of historical true crime would be complete without an entry on Jack the Ripper, the pseudonymous serial killer responsible for the brutal slayings of at least five women in London's Whitechapel district between August and November 1888. Easily the most infamous unsolved murders in global history, there’s no shortage of Ripper-related content out there: books, films, TV shows, websites – and even historical walking tours offering the opportunity to follow in the mysterious murderer’s footsteps. Of course, there’s not much for the modern Ripper tourist to see. The gritty East End streets that comprised the killer’s hunting grounds were long ago transformed as part of a series of early 20th-century improvement projects designed to eradicate the scourge that was the Whitechapel slums. But before this modern uplift, at least a few intrepid explorers were able to visit the crime scenes and view them much as the killer would have done. Read more | He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was On 20 December 1890, The Birmingham Mail published the account of one journalist’s journey through Jack the Ripper’s East London. The highlight of his adventures in so-called ‘Murderland’ was a trip to 13 Miller’s Court – the site of the last (and most ghastly) of the canonical Ripper murders. It was inside this squalid one room tenement that, just two years earlier, Mary Jane Kelly – a sex worker in her mid-20s – was found mutilated beyond all recognition. According to the journalist, “for a long time after the murder [the room] was vacant. Nobody would take it, owing to the rumour that it was haunted by Jack’s victim”. But, by the time of the journalist’s visit, it was occupied by “an old crone” and her “bedridden husband” who, for the “drop of half-a-crown” would show visitors the “ghastly relics of the crimes”. These included “a huge crimson stain” on the floor, “the fading imprints of a bloody hand on the wall”, and some pencil scratched graffiti purportedly left behind by the killer. Such “ghastly relics” were ultimately destroyed when, in 1928, the property was demolished to make way for the rebuilding of Spitalfields Market. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/5-GettyImages-145262286-5b9ade9-e1773938831936.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white sketch depicting a tall, three-storey building with several windows. Telegraph poles and lines stand outside the building, and the street out front has lots of people walking around" title="HH Holmes’ infamous ‘Murder Castle’ in Chicago. The three-storey structure, long since demolished, was rumoured to contain a network of secret passageways (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. 'Murder Castle', Chicago, United States At around the same time that Jack the Ripper was roving the streets of Victorian London, another pseudonymous serial killer was wreaking havoc across the pond in Chicago. Operating under the alias ‘HH Holmes’, Herman Webster Mudgett was a conman posing as a pharmacist, who, between the years of 1891 and 1894, lured as many as 200 men and women to their deaths. But where the Ripper seemingly killed for the sheer thrill of it, Holmes had ulterior motives – namely money. Most of his victims were the unwitting targets of insurance schemes and romance scams. And unlike his British counterpart, who committed all but one of his crimes outdoors, the nefarious ‘Dr Holmes’ preferred the privacy of his own home: 601–603 West 63rd Street, a sprawling three-storey structure, aptly dubbed the ‘Murder Castle’ by the Windy City press. Having been gutted by fire shortly after his arrest in the autumn of 1894, Holmes’s ‘Murder Castle’ is a bit of an enigma. According to contemporary reports, it possessed a labyrinthine layout, replete with secret passageways, soundproof rooms and a network of chutes and trapdoors purportedly designed for the fast disposal of dead bodies. But was it purpose-built for murder? The oft-repeated story that Holmes hired new building crews each week to ensure that no single person knew the property’s layout is likely apocryphal. Instead, he was probably attempting to cheat his contractors out of fair pay. Holmes’s astonishingly high body count may too have been exaggerated – he confessed to 27 murders, of which only nine have been confirmed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/6-BordenHouse92SecondStFallRiverMassachusetts1892-24f9fc3-e1773938890143.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Black‑and‑white photo of a two‑storey wooden house with a gabled roof and a leafless tree in front" title="230 Second Street, Fall River – where 32-year-old Lizzie Borden allegedly murdered her father and stepmother – is one of America’s most notorious addresses" /> 6. The Lizzie Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts, United States 230 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts. At first glance, this modest clapboard cottage hardly stands out in a city where the streets are lined with Victorian buildings – many of them far grander than this home. But this is actually Fall River’s most famous landmark: the Lizzie Borden House. Almost all Americans know of the alleged crimes of the accused axe-murderer Lizzie Borden. Outside of America, however, Lizzie is perhaps less well-known. And yet, most will be familiar with this little ditty: Lizzie Borden took an axe Gave her mother forty whacks. She gave her father forty-one. Andrew Borden now is dead, Lizzie hit him on the head. Up in heaven he will sing, On the gallows she will swing. But if all you know of Lizzie is the morbid nursery rhyme, you don’t know much. On the morning of 4 August 1892, Lizzie Borden, the 32-year-old daughter of Andrew Borden, a wealthy yet miserly property developer, allegedly killed her stepmother, Abby, using a hatchet. Lizzie struck 18 (not 40) blows to Abby’s head in an upstairs bedroom. When her father returned home from work for a mid-morning nap on the parlour sofa, Lizzie killed him with a more conservative 11 whacks as he slept. Read more | These are four of the most brutal Victorian murders. Were women really the perpetrators? The second verse gets it wrong too. Lizzie was acquitted of the murder charges in 1893, thus escaping the gallows. She then lived out the rest of her days in a larger, more luxurious home purchased with her father’s fortune – worth about $9.5 million (£7.5 million) in today’s money. And if we are to believe the reports of thrill-seeking tourists, Andrew is hardly singing up in heaven. He’s moaning right here on earth, forever stuck in his former home, now known as the Lizzie Borden House, a murder-themed bed and breakfast since 1996. Ghost-hunting guests claim to have encountered Andrew, Abby, their family maid Bridget – and even Lizzie herself – in the house. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/7-GettyImages-51096199-6211f5a-e1773938947804.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black‑and‑white photo of a patterned wallpapered wall with dark stains and a closed double door." title="The basement room at the Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, where the Romanovs met their end. The wall has been torn apart by investigators looking for bullets and other evidence of the crimes committed there (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. The Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Russia The fall of the House of Romanov, the imperial family that ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917, irrevocably shaped the history of their country – and indeed, the world. As anyone with even the faintest recollection of their secondary school history lessons will recall, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and subsequent execution of his entire family laid the foundations for the first socialist state in history. What most of us will be less familiar with is the house that hosted that fall: the Ipatiev House, a fairly unassuming former merchant’s home in the city of Yekaterinburg. Built in the 1880s for mining industrialist Ivan Redikortsev, the two-storey neoclassical manor would have been perfectly in keeping for a man of Redikortsev’s station, just as it was for subsequent owners: gold-dealer IG Sharaviev and military engineer Nikolai Nikolayevich Ipatiev. But for a family who had once resided in some of the most resplendent residences in Russia – including the 2.5-million-square-foot Winter Palace in St Petersburg – it was something of a downgrade. In the spring of 1918, Tsar Nicholas, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, their five children and household staff were moved into the house, where they would spend 78 days confined to just four upper-storey rooms. Under the watchful eye of Bolshevik guards, the prisoners were occasionally permitted time outdoors – though the house’s modest grounds with their oppressively high fences would have paled in comparison to the Tsarina’s private garden at the Winter Palace. Finally, on 17 July, the family was ordered to the Ipatiev’s basement where they were executed by firing squad. Meanwhile, the house itself wouldn’t fall until 1977 when it was demolished under the orders of the Soviet government. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Church on the Blood was erected on its site, with a cross marking the exact location of the Romanov murders. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/8-JohnSowdenHouseLosAngeles-e1773939013743.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A geometric, reddish‑brown building partially hidden behind dense tropical plants, including palms and large-leafed greenery" title="Despite its impressive architecture, Sowden House is best known for being the former home of George Hodel – the prime suspect in the infamous ‘Black Dahlia’ murder" /> 8. Sowden House, Los Angeles, United States Like many old Hollywood mansions, Sowden House is steeped in a long and colourful history. Constructed in 1926 for its namesake, artist John Sowden, for nearly a century the property has played host to lavish parties, film crews and fashion shoots. It’s featured in Oscar-winning films like LA Confidential and The Aviator, and reality TV programmes like America’s Next Top Model. But did it also bear witness to one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history? On the night of 14 January 1947, did the enigmatic ‘Black Dahlia’ take her final breath in the bowels of this 5,600-square-foot fortress of luxury? Maybe… Located in Los Feliz, a hillside community east of Hollywood, Sowden House is one of countless mansions in this upscale district. Yet, even in a sea of swanky properties, it sticks out – partly owing to its unusual appearance. Composed of giant concrete blocks configurated and carved in designs meant to mimic an ancient Maya step pyramid, the house is perhaps the most iconic example of the Mayan Revival Movement of the early 20th century. It is widely regarded as the pinnacle of achievement for architect Lloyd Wright (not to be confused with his more famous father, Frank Lloyd Wright). Surprisingly, however, none of these things are what Sowden is best known for. Its main claim to fame is for being the former home of one Dr George Hodel, a prominent LA physician and prime suspect in the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short – a 22-year-old budding starlet (christened the ‘Black Dahlia’ in the press on account of her raven hair), whose mutilated and dismembered body was found in a vacant lot, six and a half miles south of Sowden House. Aside from his surgical skill and supposed sadomasochistic interests, there’s actually very little to connect Hodel to the crime. Still, legions of armchair detectives are convinced of his guilt. His own son, Steve Hoddel – a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department – is adamant that the Dahlia’s dismemberment took place in the basement of his childhood home. Caitlin Blackwell Baines is an art historian and author who specialises in Georgian art and architecture. She is the author of How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books, 2025)
"We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
Words have the power to alter the course of history. They can harden the resolve of an entire nation or people, encapsulate the ideals of a movement, and evoke joy – or provoke anger – long after they have been said. Here, Dr Seán Lang explores 14 of the most influential quotes of the past 100 years
<img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/RooseveltGettyImages-464783507-622899f-e1773405930967.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Franklin D. Roosevelt sits at a desk in an official setting, with papers, a microphone, glasses, and an ashtray arranged in front of him, heavy curtains framing the background." title="President Franklin D Roosevelt prepares for his inaugural speech, 1933. The former New York governor had won the presidency based on his promised ‘New Deal’, which lasted until the Second World War (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933 The United States lay devastated by the Great Depression, an economic collapse without precedent that destroyed the country’s global image as a land of opportunity and reduced millions of Americans to poverty and destitution. The governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had run for and won the presidency on the promise of a massive recovery programme, dubbed the ‘New Deal’, but he knew he could do nothing unless the American people first regained their self-belief. In his inaugural address on 4 March 1933, Roosevelt reassured them that they had nothing to fear, except fear itself – “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The New Deal lasted throughout the 1930s until World War II set the country back towards full employment. Through the programme of reforms, regulations and projects, Roosevelt understood the power of words. He explained policies simply and clearly to radio listeners in his ‘fireside chats’, reassuring Americans that they had what it would take to improve their own lives and that the government would help. Roosevelt was elected an unprecedented four times, but it was that first inaugural message that set the tone for his time in office and helped give back the US its self-belief. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/ChurchillGettyImages-2667802-081f3a8-e1773403673660.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man in a suit and hat stands outside a brick building, holding a cane and raising his hand in a V‑for‑Victory gesture" title="Winston Churchill gives his famous ‘V for Victory’ hand signal outside 10 Downing Street. The prime minister made some of his most memorable speeches during the first few months of his premiership, when Britain came under threat of German invasion (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. “We shall never surrender” Winston Churchill, 1940 By June 1940, it seemed that Hitler had won his war. He had conquered Poland; launched a devastating assault in Denmark and Norway; and attacked in the west, invading the Netherlands and Belgium, and storming through northern France to cut off the British army and much of the French. It was only a matter of time before France was forced to surrender and German troops entered triumphantly into Paris. To any impartial observer, it seemed obvious that Britain had no choice but to seek a peace settlement with Hitler. But Winston Churchill, Britain’s pugnacious and controversial new prime minister, decided to ignore those pressing him to do just that. In an electrifying speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, later broadcast on the BBC, he declared that Britain would fight on and never surrender – that “we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be”. Churchill knew that Britain’s navy and air force would make a German invasion hazardous, though not impossible, and that the only chance of defeating Nazism was to keep going until the United States could join the war. His words defined the stubborn defiance and ‘Dunkirk spirit’, which saved not just Britain but the world from a Nazi victory. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Mao-ZedongGettyImages-515210286-5fc8355-e1773403801718.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Mao Zedong, wearing a military-style uniform and cap, stands on a balcony and claps while looking over a wide avenue filled with a dense crowd and banners." title="Mao Zedong, seen here in an undated photograph, first used the phrase ‘paper tiger’ during a 1946 interview. The term is now popularly used to describe threats that are less powerful than they might first appear (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. “The atom bomb is a paper tiger” Mao Zedong, 1946 The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 redefined the world. Leaders had always been able to plunge their peoples into war, but now they could wipe out whole cities, even countries, with a single order. While the United States was the only one with nuclear capability at first, the Soviet Union was not far behind thanks to communist spies in the west passing nuclear secrets to Moscow. Read more | Reign of the red terror: Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution In an interview with American journalist Anna Louise Strong in 1946, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, described the atom bomb as a “paper tiger”, something that looks more dangerous than it is. Mao meant that all governments depended on the support of the people, and they would never consent to using atomic weapons. The phrase was taken another way: no government would dare use such weapons for fear of provoking a response from the other side. This was the idea behind the doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ during the Cold War, as the power and number of nuclear weapons intensified. Even then, the world came perilously close to disaster on more than one occasion. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Mandy-RiceGettyImages-1365867502-dd9056f-e1773403905292.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of people gathers outside a stone building while several British police officers in traditional helmets stand among them, appearing to manage or escort individuals through the crowd." title="Mandy Rice-Davies (centre left) leaves the Central Criminal Court after testifying at the 1963 trial of her friend Stephen Ward. Questions about the model’s alleged affair with a Tory peer prompted a now-legendary response (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Mandy Rice-Davies, 1963 This ordinary retort marked an unlikely watershed in British social history. Marilyn (better known as Mandy) Rice-Davies was a model and dancer working in London’s Soho, where she met Christine Keeler and her friend and protector, Stephen Ward. A successful osteopath, Ward was well-known in high society, hosting parties and introducing girls like Keeler and Rice-Davies to his well-connected friends, including the Secretary of State for War John Profumo and the Conservative peer Lord Astor. A public scandal ensued when the truth of Ward’s parties was revealed, especially with reports that Keeler had slept both with Profumo and a Russian naval attaché, Eugene Ivanov, which made the affair a diplomatic furore. Rice-Davies was a witness at Ward’s trial. It was widely held at the time that people in high society were trustworthy and honourable, incapable of the lewd behaviour associated with ‘lower’ classes. When it was put to Rice-Davies that Lord Astor denied her claim of an affair, the assumption was that his word was worth more than hers. Her cheeky response – “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” – suggested that the aristocracy were no more honourable than anyone else. The remark caused a sensation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Cassius-ClayGettyImages-545316246-1db1a81-e1773404032921.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A boxer wearing a shiny robe with “CASSIUS CLAY” on the back stands in the ring with both gloved hands raised in triumph as spectators watch from the packed arena." title="Cassius Clay celebrates his win over Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden, March 1963. The boxer, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali the following year, frequently described himself as ‘the Greatest’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. “I am the greatest” Cassius Clay, 1963 Muhammad Ali, who changed his name from Cassius Clay in 1964, was always much more than a boxer: he was a role model for young black people around the world and a major international celebrity, mixing his sporting triumphs with irrepressible charm and wit. Boxing had long been a way for poor Americans to better themselves. Clay, who came from the segregated South, won the light heavyweight gold medal at the age of 18 at the 1960 Rome Olympics before turning professional and starting an immense career that saw him become world heavyweight champ three times. As well as a pugilist, though, Clay was a charismatic self-promoting poet always showing his gifts for trash talking. In 1963, shortly before announcing his conversion to Islam and his new name, he issued a record of rhythmically spoken poetry entitled I Am the Greatest. Ali continued to describe himself proudly as ‘the Greatest’, but he put his reputation and career on the line, and even risked jail, by refusing to serve in the US Army in 1967 as the war in Vietnam raged. His case went to the Supreme Court and Ali became a symbol of growing American opposition to the war, and a figurehead of the civil rights movement. He was now a champion of the dispossessed as well as ‘the Greatest’ in the boxing ring. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Martin-Luther-KingGettyImages-517357504-1305bdb-e1773404333188.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Martin Luther King Jr. stands at a podium filled with microphones, delivering a speech to a large crowd. People in the background wear uniforms, hats, and formal clothing." title="Martin Luther King Jr delivers his iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech during the March on Washington, 1963. The rally is considered a watershed moment in American history (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. “I have a dream” Dr Martin Luther King Jr, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr’s iconic speech was delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, an enormous statue of the US president who had ended slavery in the United States. By the 1960s, however, true emancipation was still far off as African Americans faced entrenched legal discrimination and police violence. King, who had made his name leading protests against racial segregation, was speaking to a huge civil rights rally calling for jobs and fair treatment for America’s black population, but his speech went much further than that. Read more | How did the US civil rights movement influence Britain? King’s style of oratory owed much to his background as a Baptist preacher and his imagery, of a dream in which black and white people lived in harmony and friendship – and where his children “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” – was in line with the visionary sermons that many of his listeners had heard in church. The power of his words went far beyond the 17 minutes that his speech took and the 250,000 people gathered on that day, 28 August 1963. They became not only a defining moment of the civil rights movement, but of US history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Hannah-ArendtGettyImages-135314633-43360a4-e1773404990659.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A person in a dark buttoned shirt with a brooch and patterned trousers reclines against a plain wall, one hand resting beside them holding a cigarette, their gaze angled upward." title="Hannah Arendt poses for a portrait, 1949. The philosopher’s reflections on the atrocities of the Second World War – and the motives behind them – sparked fierce debate (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. “The banality of evil” Hannah Arendt, 1963 In May 1960, Israel took the world by surprise when its secret service agents kidnapped and abducted a German living in Argentina who gave his name as Ricardo Klement. In fact, he was Adolf Eichmann, one of the key figures in the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’, the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. He was put on a plane to Israel and in 1961 he faced a criminal trial in Jerusalem. Hannah Arendt, a Jewish German-American writer and academic, asked the New Yorker if she could cover the trial for them. They agreed. In Arendt’s eyes, the bespectacled Eichmann, wearing a cheap suit instead of his Nazi uniform, seemed like any other middle-ranking office clerk; he could just as easily have been working for an insurance company or a bank. She coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to highlight the way evil can flourish not just by good people standing by, but by ordinary people in ordinary jobs carrying out instructions without ever questioning their morality. Her analysis ran into a storm of controversy. Jews were unhappy at her criticisms of what she saw as a show trial by the State of Israel; more recently, Holocaust scholars have pointed out that the viciously antisemitic Eichmann was very far from being a small cog in the machine: he was a proactive and energetic enforcer of the Final Solution, most notably directing the mass murder of the Jewish population of Hungary. However, Arendt’s idea that evil does not need supervillains, but merely enough ordinary people doing their ordinary jobs remains a powerful insight. She gave us the words to describe it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BeatlesGettyImages-84999643-9c296eb-e1773405091446.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Four men pose at a busy press event as photographers gather around them. Behind them are large globe‑shaped balloons and clusters of bright red, yellow, and blue balloons. One man holds a sign that reads “LOVE.”" title="The Beatles take part in a press call to promote the Our World television broadcast, in which they performed ‘All You Need is Love’ for the first time. The song’s simple refrain was designed to have international appeal (Image by Getty Images)" /> 8. “All you need is love” The Beatles, 1967 The Beatles were at the height of their fame and influence by the 1967 ‘summer of love’. Pop music had developed into a young people’s lifestyle and outlook that their parents, of the wartime generation, found utterly bewildering. The Beatles did not just produce hit records: they put forward a new philosophy, which overturned the older generation’s assumptions about behaviour, dress and morality. When their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band appeared in May, it quickly took on cult status. A month later, the group unveiled a new song, ‘All You Need is Love’, as part of the first global live television link-up called Our World, which was watched by an audience of approximately 400 million. The song had been purposely written with simple repeated lyrics to appeal to the international viewers, and so summarised the new attractive, easy-to-grasp philosophy in clear terms. As the song itself says, “It’s easy”. Older heads might point out that life needs a lot more than love, but in 1967 few young people were listening. Pop music has been one of the defining cultural influences that mark the postwar world: it has overcome generational, social, political and cultural barriers with its infectious rhythms and simple messages. While ‘All You Need is Love’ may have always been an ideal, it has endured. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Neil-ArmstrongGettyImages-1512723-8b06da7-e1773405173996.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A photograph of a ridged footprint in a grey clay-like floor" title="A close-up photograph of Neil Armstrong’s famous boot print, 1969. The astronaut’s first words after stepping onto the Moon became instantly iconic – despite a slight stumble in delivery (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” Neil Armstrong, 1969 That, at any rate, is what Neil Armstrong meant to say when he stepped down from the lunar module onto the surface of the Moon on 20 July 1969. Either he slipped on his words, or they were obscured by a bleep in the transmission, because the version heard back on Earth did not have that crucial “a”. It did not seem to matter. Armstrong was right: it was a giant leap, though at the time no one quite knew in what direction. Space exploration had excited people around the world since the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite in 1957 and putting a human being on the Moon had seemed the ultimate prize. Where was all this endeavour to go after that? Science fiction suggested a world of space voyages, but the reality was to be much closer to home. Space technology moved into the world of satellites, first for telecommunications and later for everything from television to meteorology and traffic management. Inevitably, the military potential of space was quickly recognised. The Moon missions opened space up as a further area of operation for the nations of the Earth, so Armstrong was right, even if he got his words wrong. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/ThatcherGettyImages-1215188595-b93ab08-e1773405339874.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman with wavy, permed hair sits at a microphone, wearing a black and white patterned suit and white shirt with V neck collar. She has large pearl earrings and sits against a blue background" title="Margaret Thatcher addresses a press conference at Conservative Party HQ in 1987 – the year her interview with Woman’s Own magazine sparked controversy (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. “There is no such thing as society” Margaret Thatcher, 1987 The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister, ushered in a revolution. Her immediate aim was to resolve the economic problems into which the country had sunk in the 1970s, which she did by promoting a new philosophy based on free enterprise and the rolling-back of state control. In an interview for Woman’s Own magazine, Thatcher outlined her belief that, ultimately, it is not for the government to resolve people’s problems; individuals and families must look after themselves and their neighbours. In that sense, she said, “There is no such thing as society”. The phrase provoked a storm of controversy. Supporters applauded her emphasis on individuals, while opponents denounced what they saw as her uncaring attitude towards the Welfare State, which many regarded as the most significant change in 20th-century British society. The phrase encapsulated two completely different political philosophies: a belief in the power of the state as a force for good or as an enervating drain on the people’s energies. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/ReaganGettyImages-514906046-9ed3ad8-e1773405425624.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Ronald Reagan delivers a speech at a podium surrounded by microphones, seated officials behind him. A section of the Berlin Wall stands in the background with a German warning sign." title="Ronald Reagan makes his famous challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. The Berlin Wall was toppled two years later (Image by Getty Images)" /> 11. “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Ronald Reagan, 1987 The postwar Soviet Union seemed a menacing, repressive world, in the grip of its secret police and ruled by a set of grim-faced old men in coats, so the emergence in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party came as a pleasant surprise. Not only did he seem more human and approachable, but he was clearly open to a closer and warmer relationship with the west. Even Mrs Thatcher commented that she liked Mr Gorbachev: he was a man she could do business with. Gorbachev embarked on a wholesale reordering of Soviet life and institutions, beginning with perestroika (restructuring) and notably glasnost (openness), encouraging people to speak openly and honestly about their lives, their past and even their government. Western countries sat up and took notice. Was it changing into a western-style democracy? Were the days of tanks rolling into eastern European capitals to crush liberation movements truly over? Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'? US president Ronald Reagan decided to test him. In 1987, the president gave a speech at the Berlin Wall, the most potent symbol of the Soviet Union’s hostile rejection of the west. He welcomed the changes Gorbachev was making, but called on him to take the most far-reaching step of all: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” No one really believed he would, but it was thought that it might force Gorbachev onto the defensive. What no one predicted was that only two years later a mass movement of people, taking their cue from Gorbachev’s glasnost policy and calling openly for freedom of speech and movement, would force communist governments from power. When in May 1989 a journalist asked Gorbachev if the wall might come down, he replied, smilingly, “Why not?” By the end of the year, it had. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Hillary-ClintonGettyImages-526599660-40d8ade-e1773405542290.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Hilary Clinton, with shoulder length coiffed blonde hair, wearing a dark top and a pink, white and gold neck scarf. She stands in front of a microphone, and is turned towards the left, looking at someone out of frame" title="First Lady Hillary Clinton addresses a news conference in 1995. Her declaration that “women’s rights are human rights” helped bring the cause of gender equality into the global spotlight (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. “Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights” Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1995 The feminist movement had used a shorter version of this phrase since the 1980s, but it entered the mainstream when Hillary Clinton, wife of American president Bill Clinton, spoke at a United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The transformation of the position of women in society was one of the most striking changes to take place in the 20th century. In Britain and the US, the century had begun with the celebrated campaign for women to have the right to vote, and by the end feminism had developed as a movement and philosophy that sought to transform human society along the lines of equality. Clinton was an apt figure to give voice to the aim. She was a lawyer who, in 1974, had been part of the Watergate investigation team that brought down President Richard Nixon. But her husband’s own presidency meant that she had to perform what was essentially a ceremonial role. She could support Bill in his duties, but could she hold office herself? As long as women’s rights continued to be regarded as a category on their own, it seemed that women would never be accepted as equals – hence her impassioned iteration that women’s rights are not just rights for women: they have always been basic human rights. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stoneB8C7su-215cbe1-e1773405675845.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A young boy with dark hair and round glasses stands in a snowy street, dressed in a black robe with a yellow and maroon badge on his chest and a yellow and maroon striped scarf around his neck. On one arm he is holding a white owl" title="Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) with his trusty owl, Hedwig, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001). JK Rowling’s wizarding franchise rapidly became a global phenomenon – despite opposition from some Christian groups (Image by Warner Bros.)" /> 13. “You’re a wizard, Harry” Robbie Coltrane (as Rubeus Hagrid), 2001 When JK Rowling’s debut novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997, it was regarded as simply another imaginative children’s book from a first-time author. As word went round school playgrounds, however, the popularity of the series grew. Soon, crowds were gathering at bookshops to buy each new title as soon it appeared, along with Harry Potter audiobooks, videogames, tie-in toys and merchandise. Then in 2001, the first of a highly successful series of Harry Potter feature films made its way on to the big screen. What had begun as a series of children’s books had become a global phenomenon, with the words “You’re a wizard, Harry” (spoken by Hagrid actor Robbie Coltrane in the first film adaptation) becoming part of cinematic history. Hogwarts, Harry’s school of witchcraft and wizardry, is clearly a nostalgic throwback to the days of Britain’s famous private schools, with their uniforms, dormitories and special trains. But much of her message is more universal: a passionate defence of honesty and integrity against the dark forces of evil in the world, including those to be found in people who sit in authority. The formidable but kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore is a sort of Old Testament prophet; the clash between Harry, whose parents gave their lives for him, and Voldemort (aka Tom Riddle), a boy who has given in to his dark side, is a modern stand-off between Jesus and Lucifer, the fallen angel. Did Harry Potter come to embody a substitute religion in the secular post-Christian western world? Certainly, fundamentalist Christians denounced the books and forbade their children from reading them. We can be sure that historians will be looking closely at the Harry Potter phenomenon for many years to come. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/For-EveryoneG5BD6F-9c59143-e1773405794351.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A packed stadium at night glows with blue and purple lighting. In the upper stands, illuminated seats spell out “THIS IS FOR EVERYONE,” while a central stage features a house‑shaped structure with projected visuals." title="Tim Berners-Lee’s cameo appearance at the 2012 Olympics ended with the words “This is for everyone” being beamed around the stadium. The words were intended to convey the democratic ideals behind the World Wide Web (Image by Alamy)" /> 14. “This is for everyone” Tim Berners-Lee, 2012 One of the most significant moments during the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics was also one of the quietest. After a stunning display that charted rural Britain’s transformation into an industrial powerhouse came a dance sequence depicting a 21st-century house party, complete with a full-size replica of a suburban home at its centre. Then, the house lifted up to reveal a middle-aged man sitting at his computer sending out a tweet: "This is for everyone.” The man was Tim Berners-Lee, and in 1989 he laid the foundations for what would become the World Wide Web. The web transformed the modern world just as totally as the Victorian industrialists had. Computers had always been huge, complex objects, the preserve of scientists and governments; until fairly recently, the most sophisticated item that people carried around with them was a pocket calculator. What Berners-Lee did was to create a way that would connect computers with each other, anywhere in the world, whether they were in people’s bedrooms or in the headquarters of international agencies. Suddenly, ordinary people had access to pretty much anything they might want to see. This was a democratic revolution as well as a technological one. As any government knows, access to information is power, and it was now in the hands of ordinary people everywhere. Tech companies grew from small gatherings of like-minded geeks into formidable multinational powers, able to face down governments. Of course, such power also brings responsibility, but Berners-Lee’s message at the Olympics was that the web should always be for everyone. A simple message – but a truly revolutionary one.
12 modern trends with surprisingly ancient roots
From dance competitions to viral memes, there are some features of everyday life that feel firmly rooted in the 21st century. However, there are plenty of fads and crazes that are much older than you think, as Hilary Mitchell reveals
1. Cooking competitions Long before MasterChef, cooks in medieval Iraq also competed for culinary glory. In the 10th century, a collection of recipes from eighth and ninth-century Baghdad were compiled into a recipe book called Kitāb al-ṭabīkh (‘The Book of Dishes’) by Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq. As well as recipes, the book also includes fascinating accounts of what could be described as very early cookery competitions. They weren’t long-running, weekly tournaments like those we see on TV, but they were still prestigious culinary events, usually staged in elite households, which allowed rival chefs to showcase their talents. In one section that sounds very much like a challenge from The Great British Bake Off, al-Warrāq describes banquets where different chefs’ versions of the same dish were compared and judged by their patrons. There’s also another anecdote (recounted in later culinary literature) about the caliph al-Ma’mūn challenging his cooks to produce dishes using unexpected ingredients – like an early version of Ready Steady Cook. 2. Online gossip These days, gossip pages like Deuxmoi – a popular, mostly anonymous Instagram account that shares insider info about well-known people – are a staple of social media sites. However, it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. People in ancient Mesopotamia were gossiping about the elite and writing down the most salacious rumours about them. Cuneiform tablets written around 1800–1760 BC record a Mesopotamian mayor’s shocking affair with a married woman. An official spills the tea, writing to the king to say that the mayor of the city has been “lying with another man’s wife”, and explaining that the citizens are all outraged; everyone in the city is talking about the scandal. The tablet is part of a group of Old Babylonian cuneiform tablets found at ancient Mari – modern Tell Hariri – in Syria, the majority of which take the form of messages sent to King Zimri-Lim about various goings-on in his country. It’s not quite an Instagram gossip column, but it’s clearly an early example of a very personal scandal spreading through social networks. Read more | Was there a real Lady Whistledown? The true stories of Mrs Crackenthorpe, Bridgerton’s scandal sheets and the golden age of gossip 3. Memes Memes, defined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins as a cultural idea, behaviour or style that spreads by imitation, are usually thought to be a uniquely online, modern phenomenon. However, plenty of things went ‘viral’ long before the internet. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/3-Memes-0c8f60e-e1772539948697.png" width="620" height="413" alt="A medieval manuscript illustration shows a knight in armor kneeling with a sword raised toward a large snail with a patterned shell. The scene is set inside an ornate decorated initial with gold, red, and blue detailing, and stylized foliage extending into the margins" title="A knight fights a snail in the Gorleston Psalter, c14th century. The image became a popular motif in medieval texts (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Some of the strongest contenders for the earliest memes are the recurring images that medieval manuscript illuminators often filled their margins with: everything from rabbits jousting with snails to cats playing bagpipes. These weren’t random; they were part of a shared visual language that spread from one workshop or region to another – much like memes do online today – partly due to travelling artisans. The knight versus snail motif appears in manuscripts from England, France and Flanders between the 13th and 14th centuries. No one knows exactly what it symbolised; perhaps cowardice or another form of social satire, but the fact that it appears repeatedly, across borders, suggests it went ‘viral’ among medieval illustrators, in a way. 4. Customer complaints Long before review sites or consumer watchdogs, people were already putting their grievances in writing. The world’s oldest known commercial customer complaint comes from ancient Mesopotamia, around 1750 BC, and survives on a clay tablet now in the British Museum. It was written by a copper merchant named Nanni, who was furious with another trader, Ea-nāṣir, for delivering substandard copper ingots and treating his messenger rudely. “You have treated me with contempt,” Nanni scolds in Akkadian cuneiform, before demanding the return of his money and warning that he will never accept such poor service again. The infamous Ea-nāṣir lived in the city of Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar, southern Iraq) and his house, excavated by archaeologists in the 20th century, contained dozens of tablets relating to his copper trade. Many of them record debts and complaints, suggesting that his bad customer service may have been a bit of a pattern. The famous tablet, with its dry fury and insistence on fair dealing, certainly reads like a modern complaint email, which in turn has led to Ea-nāṣir becoming a popular meme about bad customer service nearly 4,000 years later. 5. OnlyFans OnlyFans – an online platform founded in 2016 where creators share exclusive, paywalled and often pornographic content for subscribers – might seem distinctively modern. However, like the other examples on this list, the concept of subscribing for privileged access or intimacy is nothing new. In classical Greece, higher-status hetairai (courtesans) cultivated circles of wealthy patrons who paid retainers or gave gifts for their company, conversation, and, sometimes, sex. Unlike lower-status sex workers (pornai), these women were admired for their education, wit and influence, with some even able to move in elite, male-dominated political circles that were closed to most Athenian women. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/5-OnlyFans-2CG1KKR-dbeeca0-e1772540157727.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A 19th-century painting showing Aspasia of Miletus (left), perhaps the most famous hetaira in classical Greece (Image by Alamy)" title="A 19th-century painting showing Aspasia of Miletus (left), perhaps the most famous hetaira in classical Greece (Image by Alamy)" /> The most famous was arguably Aspasia of Miletus, companion to the statesman Pericles, who was celebrated for her eloquence and rumoured to have advised some of Athens’ greatest thinkers, according to later writers. Satirical poets mocked her as a mere brothel-keeper, but others respected her intellect. Read more | From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys 6. 'Diss' tracks When you think of ‘diss tracks’ (short for ‘disrespect’), your mind probably conjures up the combative hip-hop feuds of the 1980s and 90s, when angry lyrics sometimes spilled into real-world violence. But the practice of using music to mock, ridicule or attack rivals has a much longer history. Well before rap battles and chart-topping beefs, composers and songwriters were crafting satirical songs aimed squarely at opponents. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/6-Diss-Tracks-KREKX4-30bfeef-e1772540262384.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful illustration of a man dressed like Uncle Sam riding a galloping horse, kicking up clouds of dust. He wears a tall feathered hat, a blue coat with white stars, and red‑and‑white striped trousers. Behind him, a crowd of men, women, and children cheer and wave hats, with an American flag flying on a pole among green trees and a blue sky." title="A cartoon depicting Uncle Sam on horseback. One of the best-known diss tracks is the 18th-century ‘Yankee Doodle’, which mocked American colonists as being uncultured (Image by Alamy)" /> In the 18th century, for example, musical ridicule was a common feature of political life. One of the best-known examples is ‘Yankee Doodle’, first sung by British troops during the Seven Years’ War to mock American colonists as uncultured and naive. The famous line “Stuck a feather in his cap / And called it Macaroni” lampooned the colonists’ attempts to imitate London fashions, portraying them as pretentious fools. It’s not exactly ‘Hit ’Em Up’ by Tupac Shakur, but the aim was still to ‘diss’ the enemy. 7. Personal trainers Even if you don’t get to the gym as often as you’d like, your fitness ambitions have a very proud and ancient heritage. In ancient Greece, fitness wasn’t just about physical strength; it was a cornerstone of culture, identity and civic pride. The Greeks believed in the ideal of kalokagathia, the harmony of body and mind, and saw exercise as essential to both moral and intellectual development. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/7-Personal-trainers-2CE72A7-dad62a3-e1772540528580.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="illustration in the style of ancient Greek pottery showing several human figures and horses arranged around a central warrior. The central figure holds a shield patterned like animal skin and a spear. Other figures stand or ride horses around him, each labeled with Greek inscriptions. The scene is rendered in black and orange tones with detailed linework." title=". Greek athletic sports and festivals . Fig. 173.?R.-f. kylix. Canino Coll. the ground are planted poles and picks. The poles are usedas javelins for practice, and perhaps as measuring-rods; or asposts to mark the lines from which the jump is practised, o" /> Gymnasia, open-air training grounds where men gathered to run, wrestle and practice discus or javelin, were also vibrant social hubs, much like today’s gyms. Athletes even trained with personal trainers (paidotribai) and coaches (gymnastai) who supervised their charges and advised them on diet and exercise. In many ways, our modern obsession with health, aesthetics and community around fitness is a direct descendant of this ancient Greek ideal: proof that the pursuit of a buff body has a long history. Our ancestors couldn’t post their rock-hard abs on social media, but statues of the time preserve the ideal of physical perfection they were striving for. 8. Influencers The next time you see a well-dressed young person doing a complicated viral dance in public while their friend records them on their phone, take a moment to contemplate the original ‘influencer’, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, who lived in the sixth century. She was the wife of Emperor Justinian I and rose from humble origins as an actress to become one of the most powerful – and influential – women in the Byzantine empire. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/8-Influencers-GettyImages-122221539-LEAD-WL-d7c4886-e1772541520864.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A Byzantine-style mosaic showing a central crowned woman in a richly patterned robe, flanked by two attendants. The attendant on the left wears a patterned garment and jewelry, while the one on the right holds a gold chalice and wears a white robe with geometric designs. The background is filled with gold and green architectural motifs" title="Empress Theodora of Byzantium (centre) presented a carefully curated image of herself, much like modern-day influencers (Image by Getty Images)" /> Mosaics and contemporary accounts show her wearing lavish, bejewelled outfits that set the example for court fashion. She was a particular fan of imperial purple (an elite colour manufactured from rare and expensive murex shellfish) as well as heavy jewellery and elaborate headpieces – all of which became aspirational goals for other aristocratic women. Her image was also very carefully curated – demonstrating a blend of sensuality, intellect, and authority – much like a modern social media influencer’s personal brand. 9. Dancing contests Much-loved autumn TV staple Strictly Come Dancing is, in many ways, a more polished, spangly descendant of ancient Greek dance contests. By the sixth century BC, choreographed group dances (choreiai) were central to major religious festivals honouring gods such as Apollo, Athena and Dionysus. Festivals like the City Dionysia and the Panathenaic Festival featured formal dance contests, in which trained groups performed elaborate dances in honour of the deities. These contests were often sponsored by wealthy patrons, and participants were judged and awarded prizes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/9-Dancing-Contests-2YXX7J9-fb21492-e1772540731582.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A Roman mosaic showing four figures dancing in a circle around a veiled central figure. One person on the right holds a small tablet or scroll. Decorative garlands run along the top, and part of the mosaic on the right is damaged, revealing the surface beneath." title="A group dance depicted in a sixth-century AD mosaic from Ravenna, Italy. Routines like this were an integral part of religious festivals (Image by Alamy)" /> Also, if that wasn’t ancient enough, there’s evidence of ritual dance events much earlier, in the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation (c1600 BC). Frescoes and artefacts from Knossos and Phaistos depict groups of dancers performing in ritual circles, sometimes with acrobatic elements. While there’s no formal evidence that these were competitive in the sense of judged contests, some scholars suggest they may have involved displays of skill or athleticism. Not quite Strictly Come Knossos, but coordinated, organised group dance certainly has a history stretching back over 3,500 years. Read more | Forbidden dances and deadly marathons: 5 facts about the history of dancing 10. Fake news In this age of online misinformation, doctored images and AI videos, we hear a lot about ‘fake news’, but propaganda is nothing new. The use of exaggerated or misleading accounts to shape public perception goes back at least to 1274 BC, with Pharaoh Ramesses II and his so-called ‘victory’ at the battle of Kadesh against the Hittites. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/10-Fake-News-EgyptAbouSimbel6-498c77e-e1772540946949.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A carved ancient Egyptian relief showing a large standing figure with one arm raised holding a weapon and the other gripping a smaller, kneeling figure. Additional subdued figures appear below. Hieroglyphic inscriptions frame the scene in vertical and horizontal bands." title="A relief portraying Ramesses II slaying an enemy and trampling another — part of an ancient PR campaign" /> In reality, the battle was a stalemate. Despite this, Ramesses commissioned bombastic, braggadocious inscriptions and temple reliefs across Egypt depicting him single-handedly defeating the enemy, crushing chariots, and leading triumphant processions. These highly flattering depictions were essentially ancient PR: they reinforced his image as an unbeatable warrior-king for anyone who saw them, leaving a lasting impression of triumph, power and invulnerability that didn’t match the facts. 11. Nail art and manicures When you get your nails done, you’re participating in a tradition that stretches back thousands of years, to the civilisations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeological evidence suggests that male Babylonian warriors tinted their nails with kohl and crushed minerals before battle: black or green for nobles, lighter shades for other fighters. In Egypt, nails were tinted with henna, with deeper red shades signalling higher status. Cleopatra, according to later sources, favoured a deep crimson. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/11-Nail-art-LadyTjepu-GoogleArtProject-copy-6d5e038-e1772541183187.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A fragment of an ancient Egyptian wall painting showing a woman in profile facing left. She wears a long black wig with a decorative headband, a white pleated dress, and blue‑and‑gold jewellery. She holds one hand up in front of her face, showing her painted nails" title="An artwork from the 14th century BC shows an Egyptian noblewoman examining her painted nails" /> Wealthy elites did not paint their own nails; attendants or servants prepared henna pastes, shaped nails with small metal tools, and applied the coatings. Tomb depictions from the New Kingdom (c1500 BC) show servants grooming noblewomen, offering evidence of manicure-like services. While these attendants weren’t professional ‘nail technicians’ in the modern sense, they performed many of the same functions: mixing cosmetic pastes, shaping nails, and applying a pop of colour for aesthetic effect. 12. Cancel culture We hear a lot about so-called ‘cancel culture’ these days, with many people – often outspoken ‘free speech’ advocates with controversial views – claiming their careers have been “ruined” because of a backlash to something they’ve said or done. However, they should probably count themselves lucky that, in 2025, ‘cancellation’ rarely includes formal banishment from your home city, which is the fate that faced ostracised Athenians in the early fifth century BC. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/12-Cancel-culture-AGMAOstrakonThemistocle1-3d1f4f9-e1772541235338.jpg" width="620" height="603" alt="A black‑glazed ancient Greek drinking cup seen from above, with a ring of lightly incised Greek letters etched around the inner rim" title="An ostrakon from 482 BC, reading “Themistocles, son of Neocles”. Anyone whose name was etched onto one of these pottery sherds faced a 10-year exile" /> Ostracism was a formal mechanism that allowed citizens to exile public figures for 10 years. It was intended as a safeguard against tyranny: if an individual was deemed a threat to democracy, the citizen body could vote to remove them without resorting to legal prosecution. Each year, the assembly would decide whether to hold an ostracism; if so, citizens scratched the name of the person they wished to exile onto a pottery sherd called an ostrakon. The ancient sources are slightly unclear, but it seems either a minimum threshold of 6,000 votes was required to validate the process, or a person needed 6,000 votes against them to be banished. Those exiled retained their property and legal rights, returning home once the 10-year period ended; possibly feeling a bit miffed about being shunned for a decade.
Think your job is bad? These 17 occupations from the past were much, much worse
From digging up corpses to collecting faeces, Jonny Wilkes delves into some of the dirtiest – and most dangerous – ways that our ancestors earned a living
1. Gong farmer Medieval era Before flushing toilets and proper sewers, there were cesspits: big holes in the ground where all the human waste ended up. When these filled up, it fell to the gong farmers to empty them and take away the excrement for disposal, or to sell as fertiliser on the fields. They earned a decent wage, but the job was considered so revolting – paddling in poo using only shovels and buckets, and breathing in the foulest of stenches – that they were forced to do it at night under the cover of darkness. Gong farmers risked disease and, in the case of poor Richard the Raker, even death by scatological accident. In 1326, he fell through the rotten boards of a privy (possibly while using the convenience himself) and drowned in the stinky pool below. 2. Matchgirl Victorian era There are a lot of contenders for the title of ‘grisliest job in Victorian Britain’, but matchgirl has a strong claim. Done by young girls, it involved working 12 to 14 hours a day with minimal breaks, meagre pay and the likelihood of fines for any perceived wrongdoing (including altering a machine to prevent getting their hands cut). Most seriously, matchgirls worked with white phosphorus, a highly toxic chemical that caused terrible physical ailments, the worst of which was ‘phossy jaw’. In short, this caused the jawbone to rot entirely, causing teeth to fall out, large abscesses to form on the head and possibly brain damage. Sufferers were left disfigured and in acute pain. The working conditions got so bad that, in 1888, the matchgirls of Bryant & May in London went on strike, which eventually brought about the end of white phosphorus in the industry. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/22SBJPTX-4e0af31-e1771425220743.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration of a woman. She has her head slightly bowed, and her hair is in a bun. Her mouth is wide, with the skin around the lips has disintegrated and shows some rotten teeth" title="A medical drawing from the 1840s shows a matchstick worker suffering from the effects of ‘phossy jaw’, caused by constant exposure to white phosphorus (Image by Alamy)" /> 3. Hurriers and trappers Medieval to modern eras Working down a coal mine has always been brutally tough, with long hours underground, exhausting physical labour, breathing in coal dust, and the risk of cave-ins. Spare a thought, then, for hurriers. These were women or children sent into the mines to pull the carts laden with coal. With a leather strap around their waist or shoulders, hauling the cargo was back-breaking work and the tunnels got so hot that many chose to work naked. Meanwhile, other children – some as young as five – worked as trappers, waiting in the complete darkness for hours just to open the trap doors as hurriers passed. Read more | The ancient Mesopotamian civilisation’s weirdest job? Meet the veterinary exorcist 4. Groom of the Stool Tudor to Victorian eras The Groom of the Stool proves that not all bad jobs in history were done by the poorest and lowliest in society. Deemed a prestigious role performed by noblemen looking to make their name at court, it involved helping the monarch with their daily evacuations. It’s still unclear as to whether this meant actually cleaning up afterwards, but it certainly included carrying a portable commode around and keeping an eye on the royal diet (at both ends of the digestive cycle). It was an honour to be at the side of the monarch, no matter which throne they sat on, and the position came with perks. With all that one-on-one time with the king or queen, they could wield a lot of influence and pick up titles. One of George III’s grooms, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, became prime minister. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/4CommodeStoolcirca1650-c313df9-e1771425329227.jpg" width="1000" height="1700" alt="A photograph of a cube stool decorated with red velvet lining and a hole cut out of the top. It has a lid standing up at the back" title="King William III’s ‘close stool’ at Hampton Court Palace. Believe it or not, but carrying one of these commodes would have been seen as a huge privilege" /> 5. Lime burner Since antiquity For millennia, lime has been a useful material in construction as it can make plaster, mortar and whitewash, and is an important ingredient in glassmaking. Making lime, however, could be extremely hazardous. Lime burners heated limestone in a kiln at around 900°C (1652°F) for several days, which released high levels of carbon dioxide, to make quicklime. Given that this highly caustic substance sparked and even exploded when in contact with moisture, it was somewhat unfortunate that the next stage of the lime burners’ job was to mix it with water. Quicklime caused horrific burns if it got on the skin, and any in the eyes would result in blindness. 6. Wool fuller Since antiquity Making wool was less dangerous than making lime – but it involved more urine. To get it ready for the textile business, sheared wool first had to be cleaned of grease and softened, which was done by fullers stomping on it in a vat for hours. To really make it shiny white, though, the vat had to be filled with ammonia – particularly the type found in stale wee. The odour must have been oppressive. That said, maybe ancient fullers wouldn’t have minded, since urine was also used to clean teeth. It clearly worked, too: wool fullers were around from the Romans to the Industrial Revolution. Read more | Tales of the toilet: a historical A–Z 7. Petardier Renaissance era A petard was a short-lived weapon designed to bust into a besieged castle. Just a metal container filled with gunpowder, it could be fixed to a wall or gate and blow inwards to form a handy hole for the attackers to get through. Easier said than done, of course: the petardiers had to carry the heavy bomb into position (while defenders were doing their best to stop them), and run away before the big explosion. To make matters more dangerous, petards were highly unreliable. The name comes from the French word ‘to fart’, and there was no telling when one could let off. Now you know why it was short lived. 8. Leech collector Regency era Although blood-sucking worms do not sound like the ideal workplace colleagues, leech collectors did their utmost to form a close bond with them. Leeches had long been used in medicine – and still are today, in some cases – but the medical fascination hit a peak in the 19th century. With demand at an all-time high, collectors – mostly women – would wade into leech-heavy ponds, bogs and marshes and allow their legs to get covered in the things. Ironically enough, this put them at risk of infectious diseases. It was not only the collectors at risk here, either: so many leeches were caught that the species used in medicine almost went extinct in some places. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/8GettyImages-537586865-f6d8e08-e1771425725791.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A coloured engraving of three women working by a shallow stream in a rural landscape. One woman stands in the water washing clothes, another stands on the bank holding a stick and looking into the distance, and a third walks through the water carrying a bucket. Trees, a fence, and a distant church steeple sit in the background." title="A coloured engraving depicts a trio of leech finders somewhere in rural Yorkshire. Those involved in the trade could suffer blood loss as they sought out specimens (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. Tosher Victorian era Surely, there are fewer jobs that better illustrate how hard it could be for the poor of Victorian London than that of the tosher. These people spent their days deep underground, inside sewers, and scavenged for anything valuable or worth selling. A haul could include coins that had washed into the drains and the occasional bit of silverware or jewellery, but mostly it was scraps of metal and material. Even when it was made illegal to enter the sewers without permission, gangs of toshers continued at night to sieve out what treasures they could from the excreta. All the while, there was the chance of catching a disease, getting lost, or being swept away by the (truly disgusting) water. Read more | What did Victorians do with their poo? The battle over the 19th-century excrement explosion 10. Powder monkey Age of Sail Picture this: you’ve been abducted from a port town and pressganged to serve on a Royal Navy ship, spending years at sea and facing death every time an enemy vessel comes over the horizon. Now picture that happening when you’re a child. Warships needed ‘powder monkeys’, or young boys no older than 14 who transported gunpowder from the magazine to the cannon crews in the heat of battle. They had to be small enough to squeeze between the adults, artillery and, hopefully, avoid enemy fire. In truth, there was no safe place on a ship, and powder monkeys were essentially on the frontlines of a war zone. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/102Y7JPAM-07b9754-e1771425896496.jpg" width="1500" height="1121" alt="An illustration of five men in black and red uniforms standing around a large black cannon, which is angled out of a window. On the far left is a younger boy, also in uniform, looking stressed with his hands up as the cannon goes off" title="Powder monkeys didn’t have time to monkey around: keeping a ship’s cannons firing was tiring – and extremely dangerous – work (Image by Alamy)" /> 11. Spit boy Tudor era Preparing a Tudor banquet required hundreds of people bustling for long hours in vast kitchens, with cooks at the top of hierarchy and spit boys at the bottom. The job of the latter was simple enough: to keep the spits turning over the fire and make sure the meat was cooked evenly. The difficult bit, however, was being next to a roaring blaze all day, often perched within the hearth itself. If the fire was hot enough to cook meat, imagine what it would have done to a spit boy’s skin? Eventually, the job was taken out of human hands as it became common to get dogs, running in a wheel, to turn the spits instead. 12. Chimney sweep Victorian era While the so-called master sweeps were dancing on rooftops (if Mary Poppins is to be believed), their apprentices, known as climbing boys, were in the chimneys having a lousy time. With chimneys too narrow for adults, young children were sent up to clean the flues. Six was apparently a good age to start. Their diminutive size did not prevent them from getting stuck, however, and it was far from guaranteed that help would come for them. Those who did not suffocate to death would at least get burned, since the fires below were not necessarily put out first, and they likely suffered from serious health problems in later life thanks to all the noxious fumes they breathed in. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/12GettyImages-2667291-ff6157f-e1771426036359.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a man dressed in dirty clothing, carrying a large broom with a round bristled head. To the right, there is a very small boy leaning against the wall" title="An 1877 photograph shows a London chimney sweep and his ‘climbing boy’. Children risked suffocation as they scrambled up filthy flues (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. Plague bearer Restoration era When the Great Plague ravaged London from 1665–66, around a fifth of the city’s population perished. Traditional burial practices had to be abandoned, and in their place, plague bearers spent the nights walking the streets, announcing their arrival with the call of “Bring out your dead!” and taking the bodies to mass graves. They were powerless to stop catching the disease, despite some of the ‘cures’ being touted at the time, including drinking crushed emeralds or rubbing the bottoms of live chickens on their skin. Even if they stayed healthy, no one wanted to be near them. As such, they often ended up living in the graveyards alongside the dead. 14. Resurrectionist Regency era Medical understanding made huge strides in the 19th century, and a big part of that was increasing knowledge of human anatomy gained through dissection. Since only executed criminals could be scientifically cut up, however, there was a supply shortage at medical schools. That was until a lucrative bodysnatching trade sprouted up among those unscrupulous enough to desecrate recently dug graves. These people were known as resurrectionists. It became such a problem that families began laying their loved ones to rest with added protections, such as coffins encased in metal cages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/14GettyImages-517453470-6c250a5-e1771426240587.jpg" width="1500" height="1003" alt="A black and white illustration showing a four men in a cemetery. On the left, two men are pulling on a rope which is tied around the neck of a female corpse, which they are pulling out of a grave. On the back right, a man in a long black coat and har is looking back over his shoulder, into the distance. On the front right, a man is turned away from the viewer, holding a lantern and also looking into the distance" title="Body snatchers – or resurrectionists – haul a corpse from a grave. Growing demand from medical schools led to an illicit trade in human remains (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Sin eater Early modern era How does a Christian in early modern Europe give themselves the best chance of getting to Heaven after death? Well, there’s the life of good deeds and worship, of course, but there was something their families could do, too: hire a sin eater. Usually a destitute outcast who would do anything for a couple of pennies or a meal, a sin eater would eat some bread placed on the deceased’s chest and so take on all their sins. In that way, the job itself was not that bad – but the consequences could be eternal. Read more | “Literally whipped”: the boys who took the beatings meant for royal bottoms 16. Whipping boy Medieval era A challenge facing the tutors of a prince, or even a young king, was how to deal with them when they had been naughty. Corporal punishment was off limits – or, at least, it could not be used directly. Instead, it has been claimed (although evidence is admittedly sketchy) that they came up with the idea of the whipping boy. This was another boy who went through schooling with the royal student and received any necessary reprimand. In return, they could form a friendship with their regal classmate in the hopes that they would be rewarded in later life with titles and honours. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/16D888E0-cc93184-e1771426372807.jpg" width="1500" height="1080" alt="A black and white image showing two young boys with their elderly guardian. One boy is standing in front of the old woman, with her hand on his shoulder. They are both looking towards the other young boy as the woman hits him with a broom-like object" title="A 19th-century image depicts King Edward VI and his ‘whipping boy’. Whether or not the role truly existed is a matter of debate (Image by Alamy)" /> 17. Pure finder Victorian era There is no denying that a common theme throughout this list is poo, and here’s one more. Don’t be misled by their name: pure finders got their hands dirty. They collected as much dog muck from the streets as they could, often foregoing gloves, to sell it to the tanning industry. Faeces were a vital component in the softening of hides to turn them into leather – ‘pure’ referred to its purifying qualities – so there was money to be made as a finder. Yet the tanners themselves deserve a mention on this list too. As well as dog poo, they had to handle animal hides and dangerous chemicals all day.
Want to know more about Elizabeth I and her remarkable reign? Rachel Dinning rounds up essential reads to explore her early life, rise to power, court intrigues, and the legacy that made her one of England’s most iconic monarchs.
Elizabeth I remains one of the most recognisable and influential monarchs in English history. Born into scandal, declared illegitimate, and raised in the shadow of political and religious upheaval, she would go on to rule England for more than four decades. Her reign witnessed religious transformation, cultural flourishing, and international conflict, while her carefully crafted image as the ‘Virgin Queen’ helped cement her place in both history and myth. In this four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, I’m joined by historian Dr Nicola Tallis, a leading expert on Elizabeth I, to explore the queen’s extraordinary life and legacy. Together, we trace Elizabeth’s journey from her turbulent childhood and precarious path to the throne, through the challenges of ruling as a female monarch in a male-dominated world, to the threats posed by rival claimants, conspiracies, and foreign invasion. We also examine her final years, the question of succession, and the myths that transformed her reign into England’s so-called ‘Golden Age’. Below, I’ve selected some essential further reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archive to help deepen your understanding of Elizabeth’s life and world. These include expert insights into Elizabeth’s early years and education, her relationships and court culture, the political and religious tensions that shaped her reign, and the lasting legacy of one of Britain’s most iconic rulers.
Shakespeare didn't love his wife and he abandoned his family to move to London: are these 13 rumours about the playwright true?
With the help of Dr Paul Edmondson, we explore the historical evidence and plausibility behind 13 common statements about William Shakespeare – from his flight from Stratford to pursue his career, to the idea that his marriage to Anne Hathaway was loveless…
1. Shakespeare was forced to leave Stratford-upon-Avon in a hurry after he was caught poaching deer at nearby Charlecote According to legend, young William Shakespeare was hauled up before local magistrate and owner of Charlecote Park, Sir Thomas Lucy, after he was caught poaching deer on the estate. It’s a popular tale, but is there any truth to it? “The deer-poaching story is a nice anecdote, but we don’t know if it actually happened,” says Paul Edmondson. “There is no documentary evidence of any local prosecutions for poaching during Shakespeare’s younger years, and there wasn’t even a deer park at Charlecote at this time. That doesn’t prove that Shakespeare wasn’t found poaching somewhere on the estate, though. The story dates back to at least the 1680s – within the lifetime of Sir Thomas Lucy’s great-nephews and great-nieces – so there could be a ring of truth to it somewhere.” 2. Anne Hathaway was an ‘old maid’ when she married Shakespeare Anne Hathaway was 26 when she wed the 18-year-old William Shakespeare, but she was far from being left on the shelf, says Paul Edmondson. “Men were definitely marrying women of Anne’s age during this period – she was certainly still considered to be of marriageable age. What is unusual about their union, though, is Shakespeare’s youth. He was technically underage when they married (men came of age at 21) and had to ask his father’s permission to wed, so it was a pretty unusual set of circumstances. “Historian Jeanne Jones has identified that between 1570 and 1630, the average age for men to marry was 26, and only three married under the age of 20 – of those three, Shakespeare was the youngest, and the only man whose wife-to-be was already pregnant.” “Anne’s pregnancy before marriage and Shakespeare’s youth would have been something of a scandal,” continues Edmondson, “and certainly not something anyone would have planned. The marriage meant that Shakespeare was forced to give up whatever apprenticeship he had [married men were not allowed to be apprentices], so there must have been real concerns about how he would support his new family with no formal trade under his belt.” 3. William and Anne were married at his local parish church, Holy Trinity The location of Anne and William’s marriage has frustrated centuries of biographers, and there is still no definitive answer. Several options have been put forward: an entry for the marriage licence of ‘Willelmum Shaxpere’ and ‘Annam Whateley’ at St Andrew’s Church in Temple Grafton (a village about five miles from Stratford, and four miles from Anne Hathaway’s house in Shottery) has often been cited as ‘proof’ of the marriage. Other possible locations include St Martin’s, Worcester; Luddington; and Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon. “I’m increasingly of the view that William and Anne married at All Saints Church in Billesley,” comments Edmondson. “It was the church that Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, chose for her second marriage, even though she had no known connections to the place – it might well be that she chose the venue because her grandparents had been married there. Billesley is also close to Wilmcote, which is where Shakespeare’s mother’s family was from. Plus, it was out of the way for a hasty marriage because Anne was already pregnant. The associated scandal would have meant the pair would likely have avoided their local church of Holy Trinity.” 4. Shakespeare abandoned his family for a new life in London, but retired back to Stratford-upon-Avon “Nobody knows the precise reason why Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon for London,” says Edmondson. “In the absence of this information, a rags to riches, ‘Dick Whittington’ type of story has grown up around Shakespeare – that he went to find his fortune and then remained in London until his ‘retirement’, when he returned home to Stratford. The truth is, that there were always two centres of Shakespeare’s life from around the late 1580s, when we know he was in London, until around 1612, when we know he was more or less living full-time in Stratford. “Shakespeare bought New Place – a freehold with between 20 and 30 rooms, as the archaeology would have us believe – in 1597, and by 1598 had remodelled the front of it. The house was one of the largest in Stratford and would surely have been his pride and joy. His decision to buy and alter the house doesn’t smack of someone who wasn’t there often. New Place would have been his retreat when the London theatres closed due to plague, which they often did, and was where his wife and children were.” In 1602, Shakespeare bought land in Stratford for the sum of £320, followed by an investment of £440 in a share of Stratford’s tithes (a form of taxes on people who worked the land, which generated an income for their owners) – actions that would also place him frequently in his home town, comments Edmondson. “The investments Shakespeare makes in Stratford in 1602 and 1605 would have required managing and overseeing. What’s more, from 1604–12, references to Shakespeare in London are very few, which suggests he was spending more time in Stratford. When you look at the evidence, an image emerges of a man who was spending time in both places – this isn’t someone who, as it were, retired back to his hometown as Kenneth Branagh’s 2018 film, All Is True, would have us believe.” 5. Shakespeare is not the real author of the works attributed to him Myths and conspiracy theories have swirled around the authorship of Shakespeare’s works since the 19th century. Some doubters believe Shakespeare couldn’t have been a writer because no books are mentioned in his will, while others cite his humble background as a reason why he could not have been so successful. “Each piece of evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare did author the works rather than didn’t,” says Edmondson. “Books tended not to be mentioned in wills at this time; they were listed in inventories. And we don’t have an inventory for Shakespeare. Authorship deniers find it unlikely that someone from a humble background could have been so successful. But we see all the time that genius can arise from surprising places. Each piece of evidence that puts Shakespeare as the creator of his works needs to be contradicted before we can even consider anyone else as the possible author, and that’s something that authorship deniers simply cannot do.” But what about collaborations? “We’ve known that Shakespeare was a collaborator since his own lifetime,” comments Edmondson. “When The Two Noble Kinsmen (written in c1613–14), was published in 1634, it was jointly attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. The History of Cardenio, a lost play known to have been performed by the King’s Men in 1613, was also mentioned, posthumously, as a collaboration between them. Henry VIII, or All Is True was also written in collaboration with Fletcher, although this wasn’t realised until the 19th century. We know this because of stylistic evidence. For example, one of the stylistic ‘fingerprints’ of John Fletcher was that he used ‘ye’ rather than ‘you’. Shakespeare, on the other hand, rarely used ‘ye’, so the scenes written by Fletcher are pretty obvious. “We also know that he collaborated with Thomas Middleton. Shakespeare tended to collaborate at the beginning and the end of his career. Particularly before 1594 when he was a jobbing playwright finding his feet in the professional theatre world. After he becomes a co-founding shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men theatre company, Shakespeare seems to have become a single author focused on writing for the benefit of that company to make money.” 6. Shakespeare invented thousands of words Shakespeare has long been credited as the creator of thousands of words in the English language that are still in use today. But, says Edmondson, the number of words coined by the great playwright is actually significantly fewer. A team of experts led by Professor Jonathan Culpeper from Lancaster University, launched the three-year Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s Language research project in 2016, which used computer technology to analyse millions of words written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The research was discussed in a 2019 BBC Four documentary, Scuffles, Swagger and Shakespeare: The Hidden Story of English, in which Culpeper suggests that the amount of neologisms (newly coined words or expressions) created by Shakespeare may not be as numerous as has been suggested in the past – probably no more than 300–400 in total. 7. Shakespeare was unhappy in his marriage Although we will never know the true depth of feeling between the Shakespeares, William placed a great deal of trust and responsibility in Anne while he was away from home, according to Edmondson. She was mistress of New Place, managing a small staff and the household economy, as well as caring for, and arranging the education of, their three children. “It’s long been assumed by many that the fact Shakespeare spent time in London away from his family, combined with the hasty circumstances of their marriage and a large age gap, that William and Anne had an unhappy marriage,” comments Edmondson. “But if you study Shakespeare’s Sonnets, it’s very plausible that some them are addressed to, or are about, Anne. The final couplet of Sonnet 145, for example – which was identified as referring to Anne as recently as 1971 – reads: ‘‘I hate’, from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.’ “The sonnet is written in iambic tetrameter, and not iambic pentameter, so is therefore thought to be an early poem – ‘Hateaway’ was an alternative pronunciation of Hathaway, so it could well be a marriage poem. “Feminist scholar Germaine Greer has plausibly suggested that Sonnet 27 – which features the line ‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travail tired; But then begins a journey in my head’, followed by descriptions of a zealous pilgrimage made in his mind to his beloved – could well represent Shakespeare on tour thinking about his wife.” Much of the speculation about the Shakespeares’ marriage stems from the fact that, in his will, Shakespeare wrote: “I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture” – (‘furniture’ being the curtains and bedcover, which formed part of the complete bed). “The bed Shakespeare is referring to is likely to have been the bed that he and Anne would have shared,” comments Edmondson. “Beds were luxury items and valuable heirlooms – the best bed would likely have been reserved for guests and probably displayed downstairs where it could be seen and admired. “Wills have never been documents about sentiment. We apply sentiment to bequests, and in our modern sensibility, when we see the term ‘second best’, we assume it to be a slight. But it’s a bequest that has been inaccurately interpreted. There are other examples in wills of the period where second-best beds were left to a spouse. Such bequests came with an understanding about residential rights for the widow, to make sure that she had somewhere to sleep within the freehold or the house of the deceased. “The bulk of Shakespeare’s estate went to his daughter, Susanna, who, with her husband John Hall, moved into New Place while Anne was still there. Anne lived at New Place for another seven years until her death in 1623.” 8. Shakespeare was wealthy because he was a playwright “Not true,” says Edmondson. “Shakespeare was wealthy because he was a shareholder in two companies and two theatres – the Globe and the Blackfriars. People did not become wealthy from writing plays; you had to be a shareholder to earn real money.” 9. Some of Shakespeare’s wealth came from his father’s illegal wool dealings “This, for me, is not as mythical as it might seem,” comments Edmondson. “We know that John Shakespeare made a lot of money from wool from the fines he had to pay for dealing in wool without a licence. The level of the fine depended on the amount of wool a person was dealing, and the financial turnover from that business. From the fines John was paying, we can ascertain that he was making quite a lot of money from wool. It’s also interesting to note that in 1602, the year after his father died, Shakespeare suddenly invested a large sum of money in land in Stratford-upon-Avon. Well, that money came from somewhere...” 10. Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, drowned In 1596, William and Anne’s only son, Hamnet – twin to Judith – died at the age of 11. As was customary at the time, the cause of death was not recorded, and Hamnet was buried in the churchyard at Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon on 11 August. “Various causes of death have been suggested over the years, from drowning to plague,” says Edmondson. “But the truth is, we just don’t know.” Read more | Why did Maggie O'Farrell write about Shakespeare's son? 11. We don’t know what Shakespeare really looked like Of the many images of William Shakespeare, only two portraits purport to have been created from life: the so-called Cobbe portrait of c1610 and the famous Chandos portrait – painted between 1600–10 and the first portrait to be acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. But there are only two works of art that can be definitively identified as William Shakespeare, according to Edmondson, and both are posthumous. “The frontispiece for the title page of Shakespeare’s First Folio, published in 1623, features a portrait engraving of the playwright by Martin Droeshout,” he comments. “The second identifiable image of Shakespeare is the bust in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, which, thanks to research by Professor Lena Cowen Orlin, we now know was probably commissioned by Shakespeare himself.” 12. Shakespeare had an illegitimate son Poet and playwright Sir William Davenant (1606–68) was rumoured to be the illegitimate son of William Shakespeare in the playwright’s own lifetime – and he may well have been, according to Edmondson. “William was of the Davenant family in Oxford with whom Shakespeare probably stayed occasionally,” he comments. “Shakespeare would no doubt have been acquainted with William’s mother, Jane, and is even said by some to have stood as young William’s godfather.” Davenant never denied the rumours surrounding his parentage and went on to found the Duke’s Playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields after the Restoration in 1660, and was known as a theatre manager, poet and playwright, even adapting plays by Shakespeare. 13. Shakespeare died of a fever “The earliest reference to how Shakespeare died is in the 1660s, in a notebook belonging to the vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon in which he wrote that Shakespeare had had a ‘merry meeting’ with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton and had died of a fever that he had contracted,” explains Edmondson. “By the 18th century, this story had morphed into a tale that Shakespeare had been on a drinking bout around Stratford and woken up drunk beneath a tree somewhere in Warwickshire. We actually have a number of twigs at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – donated over the centuries – that are said to be from the very tree under which Shakespeare awoke. “It’s quite plausible that Shakespeare did die of a fever – something that could easily happen if he had drunk some infected water. Later biographers have him dying of syphilis or typhus, but we don’t actually know how he died. The vicar who noted fever as the cause of death did so after visiting Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, before she died. Who’s to say that the story didn’t come from her? It’s not impossible to accept oral history written down within 50 years of Shakespeare’s death, when his daughter was still alive.”
From maniacal horses to bat-men on the moon: 14 strange newspaper headlines from history
Muckraking journalists and money-hungry editors have been publishing sensational stories since newspapers first began. Hilary Mitchell flicks through the archives and reveals some of the weirdest press cuttings of all time
1. "German ghouls: corpses converted to soap and explosives” Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, April 1917 If you think that ‘fake news’ is a new phenomenon, think again. One of the most notorious pieces of misinformation actually dates to the First World War. During the conflict, a gruesome rumour spread that German leaders were using “Kadaververwertungsanstalten” – ‘corpse factories’ – to turn the dead bodies of their own soldiers into products such as soap, candles, and even bombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/German-Ghouls-0741ad1-e1769765897344.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline GERMAN GHOULS across the top" title="German leaders were creating soap and explosives out of corpses, claimed this 1917 newspaper article. In reality, they were victims of a deliberately shocking propaganda campaign (Image by the Newspaper Archive)" /> The lurid story unsurprisingly sparked widespread outrage, but it wasn’t true. It was a purposefully shocking piece of war propaganda, and the German government protested in the strongest terms against the “loathsome and ridiculous” claims. However, that didn’t stop the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star gleefully reporting on the hoax in April 1917, in an article that claimed the Germans were making “dividends from death” by distilling glycerine from dead bodies “and so obtaining some portion of their explosives.” 2. "O Dammit wants his name changed" The Richmond Climax, 6 June 1913 Orlando Dammit was featured in the 6 June issue of the equally curiously named Richmond Climax newspaper. The short article explained that the man wanted to change his name from “O. Dammit” because he “can’t tell whether people are calling him or merely venting injured feelings when they say ‘O, dammit.’” It’s not clear what he wanted to change his name to, or if he was successful in his attempts to change it, but presumably he would have been happy with anything that didn’t begin with the letter ‘O’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Vampires-in-Rhode-Island-Public-Domain-3e1421d-e1769766218331.jpeg" width="620" height="413" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline BELIEVE IN VAMPIRES across the top" title="Rhode Islanders were convinced the undead were sucking the blood of their own relatives and causing consumption – sparking ‘vampire hysteria’ throughout the state" /> 3. "Vampires in Rhode Island" Boston Evening Transcript, 18 January 1896 On 18 January 1896, a particularly strange story ran in the Boston Evening Transcript. The headline was ‘Vampires in Rhode Island’, and the story went on to explain: “Respectable people [are] digging up the bodies of defunct relatives… The belief is that persons dead of consumption leave their graves and suck the blood of members of their own families.” This outbreak of ‘vampire panic’ was sparked by a wave of tuberculosis (then known as consumption) in New England. Some rural communities decided that the often-fatal illness was the work of the undead and began exhuming bodies, looking for what they believed were signs of vampirism, such as fresh blood in the heart. The most famous case occurred in 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island, when the body of a young woman called Mercy Brown was exhumed. Her heart was reduced to ashes and given to her sick brother as a remedy for his own illness. He died anyway – after all, burned organs aren’t a cure for TB – but the story became a lasting symbol of the panic. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Ouija-boardPublic-Domain-7d2ac73-e1769766295767.png" width="904" height="1000" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline CONSTANT USE OF OUIJA BOARD DRIVES SEVEN PEOPLE INSANE across the top" title="Rooted in the Victorian obsession with spiritualism, encounters with ouija boards were common. The story of Adeline Bottini, featuring an alleged séance in the nude, was particularly dramatic" /> 4. "Constant use of ouija board drives seven people insane" The Long Beach Telegram and The Long Beach Daily News, 4 March 1920 In 1920, Long Beach newspapers reported that a 15-year-old girl in California had introduced “the [ouija board] and convinced other six [people] of its spiritual power”. The story went on to claim that all seven of the people involved were now under observation in the “insane ward”. The girl at the heart of the scandal was one Adeline Bottini, who police alleged was performing séances in a state of undress, “the better to communicate with the spirits”. Ouija boards were first commercialised in 1890 by a businessman from Baltimore, towards the tail end of the Victorian obsession with spiritualism: the belief that the living could communicate with the spirits of the dead. The craze began in 1848 with the Fox sisters in New York state, whose séances drew wide attention, and it didn’t take long before copycat socialites started to host similar gatherings. At these, participants were – unlike poor Adeline Bottini – always fully clothed. Read more | Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Boy-Eats-BibleGettyImages-164563808-960838d-e1769766508270.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cartoon of a boy wearing a pink T shirt, green trousers, a blue backwards cap on his head, and blue shoes, eating a blue Bible" title="In one of the more trivial stories from rural 1920s Hilton, Mellzo McCoy munched on the family Bible, resulting in an appearance in the newspaper – and a stomach ache" /> 5. "Boy eats Bible" The Hilton Record, 17 June 1926 “Unknown to his parents, Mellzo McCoy ate the family Bible with the exception of the covers and a few pages. The loss was only discovered when Mellzo complained of a stomach ache.” This 1926 snippet in The Hilton Record – the weekly community newspaper for the village of Hilton in Monroe County, New York – definitely won’t win any awards for the most detailed news article of all time. This is probably why it was buried on page eight of the publication, alongside another article (‘Bee Causes Wreck’) about a man losing control of his vehicle after a bee got into it. When it comes to stories like this, it’s important to understand how local papers worked at the time. Rural weeklies like the Record often had unpaid neighbourhood correspondents who contacted them with (fairly trivial) stories about what had happened in their neck of the woods. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Terrified-by-Donkey-f14e9ba-e1769766740393.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="A black and white illustration shows a woman falling to the floor in front of a donkey" title="Scared to death by the sound of a donkey’s footsteps behind her, a young woman’s sad demise ended up in the Illustrated Police News, known for its lurid coverage (Image by The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive)" /> 6. "Trampled to death by a donkey" Illustrated Police News, 21 July 1883 The Illustrated Police News was a sensationalist Victorian weekly newspaper published in Britain, infamous for its lurid crime coverage and emotive illustrations. It launched in 1864 and this rather sad story ran in their 21 July 1883 edition. It recounts the final hours in the life of a young woman who had set off to visit her grandparents and heard footsteps behind her. She ran for her life. Her grandfather found her body the next day, noticed his donkey standing close by and concluded that she’d been frightened by the sound of the animal following her home. Although the stories featured in the Illustrated Police News were reported in a very melodramatic way, they were, unlike the German ‘corpse factory’ article above, completely true. The publication’s content, though bombastic, was based on police reports, coroners’ inquests and court reporting. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Children-Not-Fish-Public-Domain-889d371.jpg" width="299" height="258" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline CHILDREN NOT "FISH" SO CAN'T BE MAILED across the top" title="After at least two separate attempts to send children via mail, the postal department had to step in. Children, they said in 1920, were not “harmless animals” so couldn’t be mailed" /> 7. "Children not 'fish' so can't be mailed" Des Moines Tribune, 16 June 1920 “Children do not come within the classification of ‘harmless animals’, and therefore are not mailable,” the Des Moines Tribune reported the postal department as saying in 1920, apparently prompted by two applications to ship children around the country inside packages. Parcel post was still a relatively new phenomenon in 1920, having been introduced in 1913. Some inventive parents realised that the cost of sending a package was often cheaper than a train ticket and news reports of the time carried stories about attempts to mail children: for example, in St Louis in 1913, a mother allegedly tried to mail her eight-year-old to relatives a few hundred miles away and in 1914, a 10-year-old-boy was purportedly mailed as a parcel to his grandmother. 8. "Battle with a bald eagle" San Francisco Call, 9 October 1891 The San Francisco Call was known for its flamboyant coverage, and this thrilling tale of a balloonist’s high-altitude encounter with an eagle, published in 1891, is a great example. The article describes the ascent of a 24-year-old named Arthur Cleveland in a hot air balloon. Once he had climbed to 3,000 feet, “he saw a huge bird flying swiftly toward him” and became aware it was a bald eagle. The article goes on to describe Cleveland’s daring – and victorious – battle with the rogue bird. He later retrieved the dead eagle, only to discover the local constable wasn’t too impressed; he suggested Cleveland be fined $550 for killing a protected species. Read more | A Victorian-era journalist snuck into an infamous asylum, and what she exposed shocked New York <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Real-Puppy-Love-Public-Domain.jpg-f48d0e7-e1769767410147.png" width="620" height="413" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline REAL PUPPY LOVE HERE AS DOGS GO ELOPING across the top" title="Canines under the spell of Cupid were the news of the day in 1910s Minneapolis – showing the sensationalism of early 20th-century press" /> 9. "Real puppy love here as dogs go eloping" The Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 2 March 1911 It must have been a slow news day in Minneapolis on 2 March 1911, as one of the headlines in the Tribune appears to have been about dogs having sex. The rest of the headline reads: ‘Canines Fall Under Shafts of Cupid and Kennel Society is Stirred, Four Hundred of Dogdom Buzzes over Scandals Among Young Set, Irate Husband of French Poodle on Warpath after His Rival.’ Although the full details of the story are lost in the mists of time, it’s another good example of early 20th-century press sensationalism, one which also documents the rise of pet culture we still have today. The early 1900s saw a rise in the popularity of organised dog breeding, which in turn led to the formation of kennel clubs; these sometimes became embroiled in controversies and rivalries, which were equally good tabloid-fodder. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Bat-Men-GettyImages-1397982878-a7ec22c-e1769767491349.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration of large winged creatures flying around a mountainous area with a river running through it" title="A lithograph depicts the lunar civilisation that New York newspaper The Sun claimed had been found on the moon (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. ”Bat-men on the moon” The Sun, New York, 1835 In August 1835, New York newspaper The Sun published a series of six articles claiming that life had been discovered on the moon. Not only life, in fact, but an entire lunar civilisation. The stories, credited to the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel and supposedly sourced from a (non-existent) Edinburgh paper, detailed lunar landscapes populated by bison, goats, unicorns, tail-less beavers, and bat-like humanoids called ‘Vespertilio-homo’ who built temples. The articles claimed that discoveries had been made using a revolutionary new telescope. It turned out that the hoax was the work of one of The Sun’s reporters who later admitted to inventing the stories to boost sales. However, The Sun never issued a formal retraction, making the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ one of the most famous examples of 19th-century ‘fake news’. 11. "Man doesn't trust horses" Amador Ledger, 3 October 1902 Letters to the editor aren’t a new phenomenon, as this extract from the Amador Ledger, itself lifted from Harper’s Weekly, shows. In this example, a man from Kentucky wrote into Harper’s to share his opinion that, in his long experience, “every horse at some time in his life develops into a homicidal maniac… I have driven one commonplace horse every other day for six years over the same road and then had him go crazy and try to kill himself and me because a leaf fluttered down in front of him.” The entry had the subheading: ‘Part maniac and part idiot, is what one man calls them’, which many present-day horse owners will no doubt relate to. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/TypistGettyImages-97226313-cb961e1-e1769767620435.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white cartoon of a woman sitting at a typewriter" title="In an eerie ‘true ghost’ story, a woman reportedly saw a ghost fall from a building in Aldwych, London – the same building from which a woman had previously fallen to her death (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. "Girl typist saw a ghost fall in city street" Sunday Mirror, 29 July 1934 In July 1934, the Sunday Mirror reported the case of a typist who claimed to have seen a ghost fall from a building in Aldwych, London. She fainted and was carried into a nearby chemist’s shop. When she regained consciousness, she told reporters she’d seen a girl fall from a high window and land at her feet. Interestingly, 18 months earlier, a young woman had actually fallen from an upper storey at that very location and was killed. The typist claimed she had no prior knowledge of the tragedy – whether you believe her is entirely up to you. As noted above, the mid-19th century saw a rise in spiritualism and séances. As a result, papers often reported ‘true ghost’ stories or mysterious happenings. However, by the 1920s and 30s these stories had begun to decline in mainstream tabloids, so this 1934 Mirror story is a bit of a (spooky) outlier. Read more | Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Devil-WorshipGettyImages-1387752195-62248fc-e1769767805608.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Seven people are standing in a line with their heads bowed slightly forward. Each is wearing a black hooded gown and a red devil mask on their faces" title="The global ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s led to many stories of witches and ritualistic practices. In Utah, a 12-part series in the Provo Daily Herald was dedicated to devil worship (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. "Satan worship in Zion" Provo Daily Herald, July–August 1985 No, this isn’t a particularly far-fetched plot from hit Netflix series Stranger Things: the US newspaper Provo Daily Herald really did publish a series of 12 articles in 1985 alleging widespread devil worship in Utah Valley. The articles were written by two reporters, Patrick Christian and Vicki Barker, who claimed to have interviewed “dozens” of psychologists, therapists and law-enforcement officers so they could “educate readers about the prevalence of Satanic worship in this area”. Subjects of the articles included a teenager who, it was claimed, drank animal blood after meeting a Satanist in seventh grade. Also, two Utah County Sheriff's deputies reported on “covens of witches” operating in abandoned buildings. Proof of these claims was lacking, to say the least, and the Provo Daily Herald faced criticism for adding fuel to the global ‘satanic panic’ that gripped the media in the 1980s. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Tiger-WoodsGettyImages-1097899790-f941754-e1769767906185.jpg" width="620" height="747" alt="A man wearing a black Nike sports jacket and black Nike cap stands holding multiple white golf balls in his hand" title="Tiger Woods holding his custom-made golf balls, which caused a stir following his endorsement of Nike Tour Accuracy ones (Image by Getty Images)" /> 14. "Tiger Woods plays with own balls" Associated Press wire story, 2000 The editor of this news story by journalist David Kravets was either very naive or purposefully channelling their inner Carry On scriptwriter when they crafted this saucy headline in the year 2000. The story is about the fact that pro golfer Tiger Woods had endorsed Nike Tour Accuracy golf balls in adverts, when (shock horror!) he actually played with custom-made balls unavailable to amateur players. Nike was eventually forced to confess that the balls Woods played with had a slightly harder inner and outer core than the balls sold to the public. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting story of all time, which is possibly why it was given such a cheeky, Barbara Windsor-esque headline.
History’s 8 biggest land deals: how the US more than doubled in size – and why it agreed to leave Greenland alone
From the Louisiana Purchase to the sale of Manhattan Island, Piers Mucklejohn explores eight moments in history when vast swathes of land changed hands for money
The Alaska Purchase (1867) When the US banked an unexpectedly amazing bargain from Russia In 1867, the Russian empire made the US an offer that it could hardly refuse. Still reeling from crushing defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 and fearing that the British might seize Alaska to extend their power in the Pacific, it was desperate to offload that territory. At the end of March, less than a month after Russian envoy Eduard de Stoeckl began negotiations with US secretary of state William Seward, the sale was made. Seward’s expansionist desire to extend US territory, especially in the Pacific, spurred him on to negotiate all night. The transfer of Alaska was agreed at 4am on 30 March – 586,000 square miles sold for just 2 cents per acre, a total of $7.2m (equivalent to around $155m today). Contrary to popular belief, the purchase was generally supported by the public, though scornful commentary in some newspapers heaped criticism on “Seward’s Folly”. “We simply obtain by the treaty the nominal possession of impassable deserts of snow,” the New York Daily Tribune complained of the territory, much of which lies within the Arctic Circle. “We may make a treaty with Russia but we can not make a treaty with the North Wind, or the Snow King.” Beneath the snow, though, gold was discovered in the 1890s. There was oil, too – all in all, a hidden treasure trove of natural resources. The Alaska Purchase proved to be one of history’s most serendipitous land deals. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/2Danish-West-Indies-purchase-61b4fd3-e1769012728283.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a group of five men standing around a long, rectangular table" title="The purchase of the Danish West Indies is completed in 1917 with the transfer of payment. The US deemed these Caribbean islands vital to its natural security in the face of German U-boat threats" /> The US purchases the Danish West Indies (1917) This Caribbean deal took 50 years to finalise – and involved the US leaving Greenland to Denmark Before the US Virgin Islands took that name, they were owned by Denmark, which governed them from 4,500 miles away across the Atlantic – more than four times farther than the US. The Caribbean island of Saint Thomas was claimed in 1672 by the Danish West India-Guinea Company, which annexed Saint John in 1718, then bought Saint Croix from France in 1733. They were all taken over by the Danish crown two decades later. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, President Andrew Johnson came close to securing two of the islands, aiming to establish a refuelling and repair station for the US navy and bolster American dominance in the region. When the treaty was put before the US senate in 1868, though, it was never voted on. Read more | “The motors of the wagon train”: meet the forgotten women who upended gender norms to win the Wild West Come the First World War, the strategic importance of the islands to US national security was thrust into the spotlight. There were fears that Germany might use the Danish West Indies as a base from which to launch U-boats. Washington believed that possessing these islands was necessary to secure the Caribbean and protect the newly opened Panama Canal. And Secretary of state Robert Lansing made it clear to Denmark that the US might seize the islands by force. So in 1917, Denmark ceded the three islands to the US for $25m in gold (equivalent to around $630m today). Notably, as part of the treaty, the US declared that it would “not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland”. Four years later, Denmark formally declared their sovereignty over it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/1Louisiana-Purchase-2GettyImages-3089766-d52cabc-e1769013870763.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration showing three men, two standing and one sat around a square table, looking at a large map" title="US envoys James Monroe and Robert R Livingston negotiate the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. With France desperate for funds, the Americans were able to broker a bargain price (Image by Getty Images)" /> The Louisiana Purchase (1803) The deal that nearly doubled the size of the United States When the US bought the territory of Louisiana from France in 1803, acquiring some 828,000 square miles of land, the fledgling nation almost doubled in size overnight. President Thomas Jefferson had tasked fellow Founding Fathers Robert R Livingston and James Monroe – himself later president – with convincing French leader Napoleon Bonaparte to part peacefully with New Orleans, a major port on the Mississippi River, which was surrounded by that territory. French control of Louisiana from 1801 threatened access to New Orleans, which had become so crucial to US commerce as it expanded westwards, and the presence of French troops risked the outbreak of hostilities between the two nations. The rising tension sparked talk of war and secession among the president’s enemies in the opposition Federalist Party. It was, Jefferson related to a French ally, “the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic”. But tensions dissipated quickly once Monroe arrived in Paris for negotiations in 1803. Napoleon instructed his ministers to sell the entirety of Louisiana for $15m – equivalent to around $430m today. Why so easy? The French leader desperately needed money to fund impending wars in Europe. Losing control of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) to revolution by enslaved people, he was convinced to abandon his hopes in the New World. At about $18 per square mile, the US acquired that vast swathe of land for much less than its market value. Westward expansion across the continent soon surged as successive missions, most famously the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–06, set out to chart the new territory. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/4Manhattan-PurchaseGettyImages-57068421-6dbb88d-e1769013946556.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white drawing of a large group of Native Americans sitting around, facing a white man in a hat and cape, having a conversation over a box of goods" title="Peter Minuit, director-general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, offers Native American Lenape people trinkets and clothes in 1626, negotiating the sale of what became known as Manhattan Island (Image by Getty Images)" /> The ‘sale’ of Manhattan Island (1626) New York’s earliest real estate deal – and its most misunderstood Today, New York City is notorious for extravagantly expensive property prices. So it’s ironic that, back in 1626, the 23-square-mile island known today as Manhattan was reputedly bought from Native American inhabitants by European settlers for beads and trinkets worth just a few dollars. After English explorer Henry Hudson, sailing under the flag of the Dutch Republic, came across what’s now called Manhattan Island in 1609, his employers set their sights on owning it. Manhattan lies on one of the world’s largest natural harbours. With easy access to the Atlantic Ocean and a large population of beavers, it seemed the perfect site for a permanent settlement from which Dutch merchants could cash in on the booming and lucrative North American fur trade. Read more | What was the global impact of the Napoleonic Wars? A few years later, the colony of New Netherland was established on North America’s eastern seaboard. By 1624, Dutch people were living in the lower part of Manhattan Island, establishing a settlement called New Amsterdam. To deter the British or French from making a claim to the land, in 1626 the colony’s director-general, Peter Minuit, officially purchased it from the Lenape people for a reported 60 guilders (the equivalent of $24). Despite the popular tale – that the island was sold for a small stash of trinkets – no official deed of the transfer is known to survive. Modern historians think that the Native Americans involved received clothing, weapons and metal tools from the colonists. They may also have assumed that the exchange was only temporary, or that it would allow joint use of the land. Those Dutch colonists didn’t hold onto Manhattan Island for long. In 1664, English forces captured New Amsterdam in a bloodless takeover, and gave the city a fresh name: New York. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/5RupertsLandMetis-peopleMixedbloodFurtrader1870-d7ac9f8-e1769014157808.jpg" width="317" height="413" alt="A photograph of a man in a furry black coat and a large black hat" title="A Métis fur trader – a man of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry – pictured in 1870. Many Métis and First Nations people rebelled when their Red River Colony was sold to the expanding dominion of Canada that year" /> Sale of Rupert’s Land (1869) The gigantic Canadian land grab that sparked conflict with Indigenous inhabitants One of history’s biggest land deals wasn’t between two sovereign nations but between a fur-trading company and the newly confederated country of Canada. The royal charter granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company by King Charles II of England in 1670 gave it a monopoly over Rupert’s Land, a vast territory spanning 1.5m square miles of North America. By the 19th century, the HBC was also the de facto administrator of the neighbouring North-Western Territory, which was only a little smaller. And when Canada – initially comprising Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick – determined to expand westward in 1868, these lands stood in the way. So in 1870, the British government permitted the transfer of Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory to Canada at a cost of £300,000 (equivalent to around £45m today). But in Rupert’s Land, some 12,000 people living in the Red River Colony – most of them First Nations or Métis, of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry – were shocked to learn that, without any warning or consultation, their home was set to become Canadian territory. Many of them mobilised under the 24-year-old Métis leader Louis Riel, and drove away land surveyors sent by the Canadian government. These rebels then blocked the new lieutenant-governor, William McDougall, at the border, hoping to get assurances that their language, culture and land ownership would be protected. They later declared a provisional government presided over by Riel. Though the uprising was ultimately quelled, the rebels scored a political victory. Their colony joined Canada as the Province of Manitoba – having shown the authorities just how energetically local people might respond to land transfers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/6AdamsOnis-Treaty--87c75ee-e1769014357899.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large map, with yellow, green and pink colouring, with the words Treaty of Spain in the bottom left corner" title="A map shows the territory of Florida sold to the US by Spain in 1819. Conflict with native Seminole people in the region continued for nearly four decades. (Image by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., The American Nation Vol. 14 (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1906) - University of South Florida)" /> The Adams–Onís Treaty (1819) The deal that brought Florida into the US Floridians can thank this treaty, named after US secretary of state John Quincy Adams – a man with decidedly expansionist political leanings – and Spanish ambassador Luis de Onís, for their star on the American flag. With this agreement, inked in Washington, DC in 1819, the US acquired from the Spanish territory spanning some 60,000 square miles in the south-east of the continent. (Florida became a state in 1845.) In exchange, the US agreed to assume liability for $5 million worth of damage done by American citizens against Spain. It also renounced its claim to Texas, settling the western borders of the US, which had until then been vague and contentious. The US had already taken control of parts of Florida during a series of military clashes with the Seminole, a Native American people who regularly crossed the border to raid settlements in the neighbouring US state of Georgia. These US incursions hadn’t been made with the intention of capturing land, only to suppress that Indigenous people, whose willingness to welcome escaped enslaved people also irritated the US. Adams described Spanish Florida as “serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance” to the US. The acquisition of Florida, made effective in 1821, was only the beginning of US conflict with the Seminole, however. The heavily outnumbered Native Americans, who employed guerilla tactics, gave up fighting only in 1858. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/7Danish-Gold-CoastGettyImages-113631823-4378893-e1769014782870.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An engraving showing a group of buildings, with a large flag with a cross on it standing in the middle of the buildings" title="Fort Christiansborg on the Danish Gold Coast, as it was in 1760. Now called Osu Castle, this bastion was first built in 1661 and used to hold enslaved people, but was sold to Britain in 1850 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Purchase of the Danish Gold Coast (1850) When Denmark ceded defunct slave-trading forts to Britain In March 1850, the UK bought the last forts and settlements in west Africa held by Denmark for £10,000 (equivalent to around £1.2m today). Denmark had annexed the area from the Swedish in early 1663, and the Danish Gold Coast occupied about 4,000 square miles in what’s now part of Ghana. That coastline came to be dotted with forts, most of them built in the 18th century. Read more | These three unsuspecting inventions won the American Wild West – but did they destroy it too? Known as ‘slave forts’, these bastions were commercial hubs used to hold enslaved people before they were loaded onto ships and transported away from Africa. After Denmark became the first nation in Europe to abolish that brutal trade in 1792 – though in practice, its abolition only came into effect from 1803 – the Gold Coast became increasingly unprofitable. Attempts to establish cotton, sugar and coffee plantations foundered, and all but one of the forts were abandoned in 1817. So why did Britain, which had abolished slavery in its own empire in 1834, choose to buy the colony and its forts in 1850? Partly, to expand its own influence in west Africa at the expense of France and Belgium, but also to tackle the illegal trade in enslaved people that persisted in the region. Between 1820 and 1870, British Royal Navy patrols seized more than 1,500 slave ships, freeing the 150,000 people held captive on board. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/8Gadsden-Purchase-GettyImages-484802529-b9ccc39-e1769014876920.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing three men overlooking a rocky landscape, with horses. The one closest to us is pointing towards the left" title="Surveyors map Mexican territory in what’s now Arizona and Mexico – land that will be transferred to the US with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 (Image by Getty Images)" /> The Gadsden Purchase (1853) The deal that made a southern US railroad possible After nearly two years of conflict, in 1848 Mexico was forced to admit defeat and recognise US sovereignty over Texas, which that northern neighbour had annexed a year before the fighting began. It also ceded huge swathes of territory – totalling 529,000 square miles – across California, New Mexico, Utah and six other present-day states. But if Mexico thought that the US appetite for expansion had been sated, it was sorely mistaken. The US still didn’t possess the territory it needed to construct a southern transcontinental railroad route – it needed a little more in Arizona and New Mexico. Charged with obtaining land required, former army officer and railroad executive James Gadsden signed a first draft of the Treaty of Mesilla with the Mexican president in December 1853. Mexico was in financially dire straits and, some historians think, may have feared that refusing to sell up would have prompted the US to invade. By the next year, the US had acquired about 30,000 square miles of land for $10m (equivalent to around $380m today). Construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad began the following decade, though it was only completed in 1883. Piers Mucklejohn is a freelance journalist
Want to know more about the story of Pompeii and its destruction in AD 79? HistoryExtra's Kev Lochun rounds up some essential reads to help you understand more about what happened when Vesuvius erupted, what life was like in Roman towns, and how the Roman world responded to the disaster
In AD 79, Pompeii and Herculaneum were obliterated by the eruption of Vesuvius, buried and preserved under metres of volcanic ash – and so too were their inhabitants, frozen in the moment of their deaths. Today, the remains of these two towns are among the most famous ruins of the Roman world. In this four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, launching on 11 January 2026, I am joined by Dr Jess Venner, historian of the ancient world, to explore what life was like in towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum prior to their destruction, what really happened on the fateful day Vesuvius erupted – with the help of an eyewitness – and how the buried city came to be an archeological marvel. Below, I’ve selected some essential further reading, listening and viewing from our archives to broaden your knowledge of the cataclysm that buried Pompeii – including insights from Jess herself on how be a good neighbour, like a Pompeian; Sophie Hay on what Pompeii's streets can tell us about daily life, Hannah Platts on Roman houses, and Daisy Dunn on Pliny the Younger, the man who saw it all and lived to write it down.