HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-20T10:46:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Meet the reluctant US president who accidentally changed American political norms forever
items: Did the ancient Romans wear underwear? The truth is surprisingly complicated
items: Meet the shadowy assassins who were seconds from taking out Saladin – and upending the Crusades
items: The Bayeux Tapestry is beautiful, but what was its purpose? New research might have the answer
items: Henry VIII wanted a giant Tudor tomb. So why didn’t he get it?
items: Did Aztec civilisation really ‘collapse’? The reality isn’t as simple as you might think
items: Ancient Roman culture would be baffling to modern eyes – and their toilet habits prove it
items: Has history’s most famous comet been misnamed for centuries? “The answer is clear,” say historians
items: Want to live like a Tudor? Historian Ruth Goodman did, and here are five crucial lessons she learned
items: Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think

Meet the reluctant US president who accidentally changed American political norms forever
type: item
date: 2025-12-20T10:45:42.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In an era when candidates were expected to remain silent, detached and above the chase for votes, James Garfield’s improvised presidential campaign in the late 19th century transformed the race for the highest office in the USA
encoded: When James A Garfield reluctantly accepted the Republican nomination for president in June 1880, he stepped into a fraught political culture that was governed by strict codes of restraint. Put simply, in the late 19th century, a presidential candidate wasn’t meant to appear eager for the job. Publicly courting votes was distasteful, demeaning, and incompatible with the dignity of the office. As biographer CW Goodyear puts it, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, the prevailing view was that “if you are interested in the job, it’s not for you.” The job of actively campaigning was delegated to party operatives, loyal newspapers and travelling surrogates. The candidate was supposed to stay out of public view while conveying lofty neutrality. On one level, that was a culture that suited Garfield. He was a man who, to all appearances, never intended to become the Republican party’s presidential nominee, let alone the actual president. So how did he – who was both dignified and reluctant – end up being the man who dismantled such norms of dignified reluctance? It feels like an irony, and yet, as Goodyear explains, Garfield’s election campaign of 1880 did indeed mark a turning point that upended the long-standing taboo against candidates speaking directly to voters. It changed campaign culture forever. American presidential ideals in the 19th century “It was seen as being desperate and pathetic for a presidential candidate to go rally voters. That was seen as being beneath the office,” explains Goodyear, setting out the attitudes that prevailed as the 1880 presidential election loomed. But where had that notion come from? Read more | The 5 most notorious presidents in US history The expectation that candidates should remain silent was rooted in early republican ideals inherited from the late 18th century, when the American colonies had won their independence from Britain and forged the United States of America. The Founding Fathers had worried that unrestrained electionee…

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Did the ancient Romans wear underwear? The truth is surprisingly complicated
type: item
date: 2025-12-18T11:22:44.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: A seemingly simple question opens up difficult debates about ancient Roman beauty ideals and social hierarchy, and reveals how differently the Romans thought about their bodies
encoded: At first glance, it seems like a question with an obvious answer. Surely the Romans, famed for the complexity of their social culture, engineering prowess, elaborate fashions and careful etiquette, must have worn underwear? It’s hard to imagine that members of the civilisation that built aqueducts and amphitheatres wandered along their famously straight roads without anything beneath their tunics. Yet as professor Ursula Rothe explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the reality of Roman underwear is very ambiguous, and exceptionally tricky to pin down. “This is quite a controversial topic,” she says. The debate begins with what the people of the Roman empire wore (or didn’t), but morphs into more complex questions about how they viewed the body, beauty, modesty and status. Roman writers left detailed descriptions of clothing, hairstyles, jewellery and elite fashion, but almost nothing about underwear. “On the whole it’s not really something Romans talk about,” Rothe notes. “It’s not something that is depicted.” Most organic Roman textiles have vanished from the archaeological record, not being something that preserves over two millennia. The few surviving garments and images that have survived are often inconclusive. This scarcity of evidence has led to competing interpretations of Roman underwear. But what’s the answer? As Rothe explains, looking at the clues reveals as much about Roman values, as it does about Roman clothing – or lack thereof. Roman Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | In this four-week course, discover everything you need to know about Roman Britain, guided by Rob Collins, professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University. Explore the course now Roman fashion and the purpose of the strophium There is one thing we can say with relative certainty about underwear: there was something like a bra. “We do know that women wore a band around their bust called a strophium,” Rothe says. This was a simple cloth band th…

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Meet the shadowy assassins who were seconds from taking out Saladin – and upending the Crusades
type: item
date: 2025-12-16T14:12:13.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Two near-fatal attacks on Saladin by the Nizari Ismailis reveal a Middle Eastern landscape far more complex than the usual Crusader-versus-Muslim narrative – and show how close the Crusades came to taking a very different path
encoded: When Saladin sat down to supper in the spring of 1175, he was already one of the most significant figures in the Islamic world. The former commander of the Fatimid armies in Egypt had, within a decade, dismantled the Shi’a caliphate there, restored Sunni rule, and begun extending his authority across Syria. He was building the first unified Sunni power in the region since the Seljuk empire, and it was set to transform the balance of power in the Crusades. That evening, encamped outside Aleppo in Syria during a campaign against a regional Sunni rival, Saladin’s camp was busy with the hum of military life. It seemed an unlikely moment for immediate peril. But amid all the bustling activity, a small group of strangers, disguised as common merchants, slipped inside Saladin’s tent. Moments later, as medieval historian Dr Steve Tibble recounts on the HistoryExtra podcast, “all hell [broke] loose, and they [went] straight for Saladin.” These were deadly members of the Nizari Ismailis. A group who would later be labelled as ‘the Assassins’ in Western chronicles, the Nizari Ismailis were a small, embattled Shi’a sect who, says Tibble, “took the art of political murder to a new level of sophistication”. But why had Saladin become a target? And what might have happened if they had succeeded? Why the Assassins saw Saladin as an existential threat By the 12th century, the Middle East was a patchwork of competing powers. Two Islamic powers, the Sunni and Shi’a, battled among themselves while Crusader states took and held key territories along the Levantine coast. The Nizari Ismailis were a minority Shi’a community centred in remote mountain fortresses in Persia and Syria. And they had their own desires. Their strategy, Tibble explains, stemmed from necessity. “From their perspective, they were a tiny group fighting for their survival in the only way that they could.” Surrounded by larger Sunni powers and despised by many for their beliefs, they honed assassination as a tool that …

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The Bayeux Tapestry is beautiful, but what was its purpose? New research might have the answer
type: item
date: 2025-12-15T16:12:18.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: A new theory proposes that the Bayeux Tapestry was designed to deliver moral messages to medieval monks over dinner
encoded: The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most astonishing artefacts to survive from medieval Europe. It tells the story of the end of Anglo-Saxon rule at the hands of Duke William of Normandy, whose victory in 1066 ushered in the Norman Conquest – one of the most significant turning points in British history. But beyond recounting the rise of Norman supremacy, what was the Bayeux Tapestry really for? Was it only an extraordinary work of propaganda, designed as a display of righteous power? Or was it intended to have a more specific and purposeful role? The answer to that latter question is: yes, according to historian Professor Benjamin Pohl of the University of Bristol. He argues that the Bayeux Tapestry was created to be a moral aid viewed by medieval monks while they silently ate their meals in a communal refectory. What was the Bayeux Tapestry for? Professor Pohl explains his argument in a new article 'Chewing over the Norman Conquest: the Bayeux Tapestry as monastic mealtime reading', in which he makes the case that the embroidery was designed specifically to be hung in the monastic dining hall of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, where it would have accompanied spoken readings and prompted moral reflection. Following the rule of St Benedict, which governed monastic life across much of medieval Europe, medieval monks were expected to maintain complete silence while eating, aside from the voice of the reader delivering the day’s text. These readings delivered moral instruction to the diners, in a setting where any visual imagery would have reinforced spoken words and offered a focus for contemplation. A tapestry made for monks The Bayeux Tapestry famously depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 through a series of cartoon-style embroidered scenes, accompanied by short Latin captions. Most scholars agree that the embroidery was probably made in, or near, Canterbury in the 11th century. That conclusion rests on similarities in its style an…

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Henry VIII wanted a giant Tudor tomb. So why didn’t he get it?
type: item
date: 2025-12-13T11:35:49.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Henry VIII planned a monumental tomb to match his power and legacy. Instead, the king who reshaped England’s relationship with Rome now lies beneath a small, easily missed slab. Here’s how three Tudor monarchs, and a civil war, erased his grand design
encoded: It would be entirely possible to visit St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle and glance over the modest stone slab marking the grave of Henry VIII without noticing it. Its setting might be grand, but the marker itself is startlingly small: which is striking, given that it denotes the resting place of a titanic monarch who dominated the first half of the 16th century of English history with his palaces, pageantry and sweeping religious reforms. How exactly did a king famed for grandeur and excess end up with one of the least conspicuous graves of any English ruler? As historian Kate Williams explains, the anonymity was never Henry’s intention. “Henry VIII wanted a giant tomb in St George's Chapel,” she says, on an episode of her HistoryExtra Academy course. “But he made a big mistake.” It was that mistake that would ultimately ruin his ambitious vision and leave him with the humble gravestone. Henry VIII’s vast funerary vision Henry VIII’s planned tomb was intended to be a memorial that also served as a message. Late medieval and early Tudor monarchs used their tombs to assert legitimacy, commemorate dynastic claims and broadcast their religious identity. Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster, completed in gilded splendour, set a new standard. Henry VIII planned to exceed it. “He wanted a huge tribute with a big bronze effigy of him,” says Williams, “surrounded by pillars and models of angels and saints. It was going to be inside a black marble chapel.” The king saw that as befitting the scale of his ambitions and achievements in life. A tomb on this scale would have functioned as his final statement of royal authority, suitable as the resting place of a monarch who made himself head of the English Church. But the mistake Henry made was that he didn’t complete it during his lifetime. Instead, he trusted his successors to see it through. An unfinished project inherited by unwilling heirs When Henry died in 1547, his tomb was incomplete and enormously expensive. It was a pr…

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Did Aztec civilisation really ‘collapse’? The reality isn’t as simple as you might think
type: item
date: 2025-12-11T11:58:16.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: The Spanish conquest might have toppled the Aztec imperial state with startling speed, but unpicking precisely what ‘collapse’ really means reveals a far more complicated story
encoded: At a glance, the fall of the Aztec empire in the early 16th century seems like one of history’s clearest before-and-after moments: a powerful empire crushed almost instantly by a handful of Spanish conquistadors. But that picture, vivid as it is, has long obscured the more complicated reality of what was destroyed, and what endured. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Caroline Dodds Pennock and scholar of civilisational collapse Luke Kemp examine why the Aztec imperial system fell so quickly, why ‘collapse’ is a loaded term, and what lessons it leaves behind. The destruction of Aztec knowledge One of the biggest obstacles to retrospectively understanding Aztec society is that we lack writing from the period, explains Dodds Pennock. Most Aztec records were deliberately destroyed almost immediately after the conquest that began in 1519. Pennock stresses the scale of that loss. After taking Tenochtitlán, Spanish authorities oversaw the burning of vast quantities of Aztec pictorial texts and administrative documents, instigating “a huge destruction of this vast pictographic culture,” that included the loss of “incredible legal records, religious records, political records.” The devastation, she notes, has been likened to “the conflagration of the Library of Alexandria.” Read more | Cortés and Montezuma: the conquering of Tenochtitlán What survives, both in terms of written sources and archaeological material, reveals a sophisticated society, but one viewed largely through Spanish lenses. Acknowledging that bias, suggests Pennock, and looking beyond it, can reveal the immense sophistication of the Aztec empire before its fall. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-51241466-22bf3b1-e1765453906433.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Spanish conquistadors destroying Aztec idols in the aftermath of the conquest. Such acts formed part of a wider campaign to suppress Indigenous religion and assert Christian author…

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Ancient Roman culture would be baffling to modern eyes – and their toilet habits prove it
type: item
date: 2025-12-09T14:24:45.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Ancient Roman ideas of privacy differed radically from our own, and their communal toilets reveal a mindset almost impossible for modern people to imagine
encoded: The right to privacy is a pillar of modern human rights. It’s a concept so deeply ingrained in our society that it can feel universal. We assume that certain spaces like our homes – especially their bedrooms and bathrooms – are inherently private while streets, workplaces and public buildings are for communal life. But these distinctions haven’t always existed. And in the culture of the ancient Roman world, the definition of privacy was entirely different. How, then, did the people across the Roman empire conceive of privacy if not through physical seclusion? Why were communal latrines the norm? And what does this reveal about Roman values? Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Dr Hannah Platts explains how understanding those answers requires stepping into a cultural world where the individual was less important than the collective, and where privacy meant something very different from what it does today. What “public” and “private” meant to the Romans “It is really important not to conflate the urban realm of the city and the domestic realm of the house with our modern notions of urban as public and domestic as private,” she says. Today, closing a door marks out a sphere of personal privacy. In Rome, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Romans distinguished between the private and the public based on the activity itself, rather than the place where the activity was happening. Read more | If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate? Confused? You’re right to be. It’s a tricky distinction, but Platts thinks a lesson in Latin can help illuminate what’s going on. “The Latin word privatus translates as ‘of or belonging to an individual’, apart from the state or the community.” By contrast, publicus meant “belonging to the people, belonging to the state, belonging to the community.” So whether something was public or private depended on whether it affected the civic body, not where it happened. A legal consultation in someone’s …

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Has history’s most famous comet been misnamed for centuries? “The answer is clear,” say historians
type: item
date: 2025-12-06T10:45:53.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: David Musgrove reports on new research that casts light on the appearance of the comet in the 11th century, and its depiction in the Bayeux Tapestry
encoded: Halley’s Comet was last seen from Earth in 1986 and is expected to return in 2061. It’s widely taken for granted that the Stuart astronomer Edmond Halley was the first to recognise its roughly 76-year cycle, an insight he formalised in 1705 and which ultimately gave the comet his name. However, new research by professors Michael Lewis of the British Museum and Simon Portegies Zwart of Leiden University says that attribution might be wrong. Their work suggests that credit may instead belong to an English medieval monk named Elmer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-514079858-a25607f-e1764931346339.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Halley’s Comet streaks across the sky in this 1986 photograph taken from the Ford Observatory, marking its most recent visit to the inner solar system. Once feared as a portent of upheaval, the comet is now a predictable visitor whose returns chart centuries of astronomical discovery." title="Halley's Comet, 1986" /> Elmer the flying monk Elmer, also known as Aethelmaer, lived in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, and is best remembered for leaping off Malmesbury Abbey attached to some homemade wings, attempting human flight, at some point between 1000-1010. In the words of chronicler William of Malmesbury, Elmer “had by some contrivance fastened to his hands and feet in order that he might fly as Daedalus, and collecting the air, on the summit of a tower, had flown for a distance of a furlong”. As well as recording Elmer’s early exploits in aviation, William also noted that – perhaps unsurprisingly – the flight did not end well. The monk ended up crashing to the ground, breaking his legs and becoming lame as a consequence. Despite this disability, he lived a long life and was still around (albeit elderly) during the Norman Conquest in 1066. Notwithstanding his very rough landing in 1005, Elmer’s legacy as the flying monk was secured, and even now, Malmesbury boasts a Flying Monk Brewery. Arguabl…

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Want to live like a Tudor? Historian Ruth Goodman did, and here are five crucial lessons she learned
type: item
date: 2025-12-04T11:11:00.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: What did everyday life look like for the millions of ordinary people living in Tudor England? Historian Ruth Goodman found out by living the way they did, uncovering a world that was hard, industrious – but also fulfilling
encoded: “Fridges are a bit overrated.” That’s one of the conclusions that Ruth Goodman came to after spending six months living the life of an ordinary Tudor. Living and working in a farmstead meticulously constructed to be Tudor-authentic, she immersed herself in the granular details of 16th-century Britain, eating Tudor food, sleeping in a Tudor bed, and doing Tudor work. It’s a stark contrast to the popular focus on the Tudor-era that’s often seen through the prism of palaces and politics. Landmark moments in history such as Henry VIII’s marital troubles, the Reformation, and Elizabeth I presiding over an age of exploration take the limelight. But these headline events have never been the sole focus of Goodman’s interests. Instead, she wanted to know about the ordinary people. “I'm not posh, I'm not rich, I'm not a bloke, and I'm not one of the elite,” she said. “Why would I be interested in them?” “I wanted to know about people like me in the past. I wanted to know about the ordinary details,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to try and get inside the skin of someone: to think those thoughts and to feel those feelings. “It's time travel, but it's also anthropology and self-exploration too.” But other than a disdain for fridges, what did Goodman really learn about ordinary Tudors and the rhythms of their lives? Goodman poured her knowledge and experience into a HistoryExtra Academy series on Tudor Life, and speaking about that series on the HistoryExtra podcast, she reflected on five key lessons learned. Lesson one: Tudor childhood was an apprenticeship for adulthood In 16th-century England, childhood was brief and productive. For most families, survival depended on the contributions of every member, and children entered the world of useful labour much earlier than we might expect. “Tudor children needed to know how to do things such as milk a cow, or grow a crop of beans, or make a piece of clothing,” Goodman explained. Formal schooling existed but was limited; literacy le…

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Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think
type: item
date: 2025-12-02T11:13:22.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Though rare, female gladiators did appear in the Roman arena, challenging ancient Rome’s expectations and revealing how spectacle, politics and social boundaries shaped life in the empire
encoded: “There were female gladiators and there’s no doubt about that.” That's the assessment of historian Harry Sidebottom, author of Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. A female gladiator is an image that challenges what many think they know about the role of gladiatorial combat in the Roman empire, and the role of women in ancient Rome more broadly. Or does it? In fact, Sidebottom argues, the role of female gladiators wasn’t a subversive example of female empowerment. Instead, it was designed as a spectacle to shock and delight audiences, intentionally playing with preconceptions – and upholding them. Still, it’s a hard image to reconcile with what we know of the gladiatorial games, and women’s lives across the Roman empire. So how should we understand the presence of female gladiators in a society that imposed such strict regulations on women’s behaviour? And how does it fit into the broader story of gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, and the way in which it evolved through antiquity? Sidebottom has some of the answers. Gladiatorial combat: a Roman spectacle with mysterious beginnings Even the Romans were unsure how their most famous form of entertainment began. “Ancient writers said it was an import from the south, from Campania. [Others] said no, it was an import from the north, from Etruria,” Sidebottom explains. Their disagreement reflects how far back the practice reached, well before gladiators became imperial icons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-152190511-fe3456d-e1764672038606.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This detail from the 'Ten Girls' mosaic at the Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina shows young women training with hand weights and a discus. Dating to the early 4th century AD, the scene highlights the place of athletic exercise in elite Roman life." title="Detail of the Ten Girls Mosaic depicting women athletes" /> De…

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