HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-11-26T17:20:32.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Think you know everything about the history of Thanksgiving? Here’s 21 facts that will prove you wrong
items: When was the White House built – and why is it white?
items: Is Oppenheimer a true story? Meet the real Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’
items: Are Bertha and George Russell real? Inside the real Vanderbilt divorces that rocked the Gilded Age
items: What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
items: "These women transformed his understanding of the world": making Malcolm X
items: Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified?
items: Was JFK about to be re-elected? An expert weighs in on the president's lost second term
items: Could America have won the Vietnam War? The mistakes that denied the US victory
items: “Risks he should never have taken”: a historian’s take on JFK’s sexual waywardness

Think you know everything about the history of Thanksgiving? Here’s 21 facts that will prove you wrong
type: item
date: 2025-11-26T15:03:54.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Thanksgiving
description: From tales of pumpkin-pie panics to the story of the president who turned his dinner into a pet, Jonny Wilkes uncovers the surprising history behind Thanksgiving: America’s turkey-tastic holiday
encoded: There are only two accounts of the first Thanksgiving The story of the first Thanksgiving has been highly mythologised in American history. In 1621, the so-called Pilgrims who travelled on the Mayflower and formed the settlement of Plymouth, in Massachusetts, came together with the local indigenous peoples, the Wampanoag, for a feast to celebrate a good harvest and the growing friendship of settler and Native American in the New World. That is the version long told in schools. In truth, the Pilgrims threw themselves a harvest festival and around 90 of the Wampanoag showed up. Without their help, especially a man named Squanto, the European settlers would have likely perished in their brutal first winter. The only sources for the three-day feast are sparse mentions in writings by two of the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow and William Bradford. Neither actually used the word ‘thanksgiving’, however, and since they gave few details of what happened, the mythologising took over. They may not have eaten turkey at the first Thanksgiving For many Americans, no modern Thanksgiving meal is complete without a turkey as the centrepiece of the table. It’s unclear, however, whether this tradition began in 1621. The Pilgrims cooked up a selection of fowl – which may have included turkey, but could just as easily been duck and goose – while the Wampanoag killed a number of deer, meaning venison was on the menu. They might have had seafood, too, including eels, clams, mussels and lobster. Yes, William Bradford mentioned a “great store of wild Turkies” in the region, but the bird did not become a staple of the Thanksgiving meal until the 19th century. The first Thanksgiving may have happened earlier than 1621 While the 1621 feast became the foundation for the Thanksgiving holiday, perhaps Americans should celebrate a different year. Other acts of thanksgiving, based in the tradition of Christian harvest festivals, took place earlier in the short-lived Popham Colony in Maine and Jamestown i…

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When was the White House built – and why is it white?
type: item
date: 2025-10-27T17:06:42.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: How much do you know about the history of the White House in Washington, DC, which has been home to all US presidents since John Adams in 1800?
encoded: Inscribed on the stone fireplace of the State Dining Room of the White House are the words: “I pray to Heaven bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” The blessing, which was engraved there in 1945, came from a letter written by John Adams to his wife Abigail in 1800. He was the second man to be president of the United States, but the first to reside in the world-famous home of the presidency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, in Washington, DC. A decade earlier, there had been no such place as Washington, DC, on the Potomac River. Founded by the Residence Act of 1790, the new capital would be a modern metropolis laid out in a grid system and with grand boulevards and public spaces everywhere. In the short term, though, it was not a promising place to live: if not hectic with the constant building works, there was nothing around but forests and some wetlands, where sanitation was poor and conditions were cold to freezing. Still, this would be the home of the president. George Washington, the first man elected to the office, personally chose the site for what would be the White House along with city planner Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and launched a competition for the building’s design. When was the White House built? Construction of the White House got underway with the laying of the cornerstone on 13 October 1792. But the the so-called ‘Presidential Palace' would not be finished until after Washington had left office. Even by 1800, when Adams moved in, the building was far from complete. It would be added to, repaired and extended many times throughout the years, not least when it had to be reconstructed following the War of 1812. The photogenic South Portico was added in 1824, followed by the North Portico, completed in 1830. The West Wing was added in 1902 and within, in 1909, the first iteration of the Oval Office. The East Wing was developed in 1942 – it is the fo…

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Is Oppenheimer a true story? Meet the real Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’
type: item
date: 2025-07-13T16:38:11.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical people
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer tells the story of the creation of the atomic bomb, a weapon so powerful that it redefined the world order. And at the centre of its development was of the first nuclear weapon, and the paradoxes and moral questions that dogged him for the rest of his life
encoded: Few famous scientists have left quite as complex a legacy as J Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb' who reflected, in aftermath watching the raw power of the first ever nuclear test in 1945, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer's moral quandaries and personal demons nestled alongside his scientific brilliance, and all are explored in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. Starring Cillian Murphy ( perhaps known to history fans for his role in Peaky Blinders) in the title role, the film follows Oppenheimer’s journey from acclaimed theoretical physicist to director of the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory, where he led team of brilliant minds in a race to unlock the destructive power of the atom. The star cast also includes Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Robert Downey Jr as Lewis Strauss, and Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves. But is any of what we see in the film true? Read on for a full breakdown of the real history in Oppenheimer. Is Oppenheimer a true story? Yes, Oppenheimer is based on true events. The film tells the story of J Robert Oppenheimer, a real-life American physicist who played a central role in the Manhattan Project, the United States’ secret programme to develop the first atomic bomb, which began in 1942. Kitty Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, Jean Tatlock, General Leslie Groves – they were all real historical figures who shaped Oppenheimer's life and work. So too were the questions around his political leanings, and the intense scrutiny he endured during the post-war era. Briefed with weaponising atomic energy, the 38-year-old Oppenheimer was chosen by General Leslie Groves to head up the project’s secret research laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and oversaw the development of the world’s first atomic weapons between 1943-45. Prior to taking up the post, he had carried out research into the quantity of radioact…

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Are Bertha and George Russell real? Inside the real Vanderbilt divorces that rocked the Gilded Age
type: item
date: 2025-06-22T07:35:26.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Julian Fellowes, the creator behind HBO’s The Gilded Age, has taken plenty of cues from real history for the characters of Bertha and George Russell, seemingly turning to the lives of Alva and William K Vanderbilt in plotting much of their story. Discover the real history, and what this could mean for everyone’s favourite power couple in series three
encoded: Bertha Russell is the undisputed queen of Julian Fellowes’s drama The Gilded Age. In the story so far, glamorous ‘new money’ socialite Bertha (played by Carrie Coon) has conquered New York society through means both fair and foul, and risen to the top of the so-called ‘Four Hundred’. And she’s done it all while holding the steady hand of her husband, ruthless ‘robber-baron-with-a-conscience’ George (played by Morgan Spector). To date, her plot has mirrored many key moments in the life of a real historical figure in New York’s Gilded Age history: Alva Vanderbilt. In the show, Bertha has befriended Ward McAllister (who was a real contemporary of Alva); thrown a grand ball in her Fifth Avenue mansion to signal to Mrs Caroline Astor and the Four Hundred that she means business (as Alva did in 1883); and she has triumphed in the War of the Operas (as Alva claimed victory too). For Bertha, life is perfect, right? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/12/0750TheGildedAgeS02-1-3c0deb0-e1702915513531.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="Taissa Farmiga as Gladys Russell & Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell. Bertha is thought to be based on Alva Vanderbilt, who secured the marriage of her daughter, Consuelo, to the 9th Duke of Marlborough." title="Taissa Farmiga as Gladys Russell & Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell. Bertha is thought to be based on Alva Vanderbilt, who secured the marriage of her daughter, Consuelo, to the 9th Duke of Marlborough." /> Far from it. When we left the Russells in season two, Bertha had successfully courted the Duke of Buckingham, a British aristocrat visiting New York, and welcomed him publicly as her guest to the opera, evidence that she had finally been accepted by the highest echelons of society. But beneath the surface, all is not well, with others speculating over the lengths to which she had gone in securing the Duke’s alliance. Meanwhile, she and George were at loggerheads over the marital prospects of their daughte…

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What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
type: item
date: 2025-06-19T16:14:58.000Z
creator: Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Civil rights
subject: Slavery
description: Each year on 19 June, millions across the US gather to commemorate the day in 1865 when the last enslaved African Americans finally learned of their freedom. Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith explores how the celebrations have evolved over the past 160 years – and the long campaign to have Juneteenth formally recognised as a federal holiday
encoded: Every summer, the Juneteenth holiday offers Americans an opportunity to celebrate visions of black freedom in the United States. ‘Juneteenth’ refers to 19 June 1865 – the day that victorious federal troops read out a General Order to the inhabitants of Texas’s Galveston Island declaring that “all slaves are free” – but enslaved people knew the date was a bit arbitrary. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery in the Confederate states more than two years prior, and the ratification of the 13th amendment six months later would end it throughout the US. Emancipation came to the South not as a dramatic, singular event but, instead, agonisingly slowly over space and time. Yet, for all the news that black Texans had passed to each other about slavery and the Confederacy being on the ropes in the years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory, slaveholders in the Confederacy’s western frontier held fast to their regime until the Union Army’s arrival made emancipation enforceable. Within weeks, the more than 250,000 black people enslaved across Texas began seizing their freedom. Within a year, they had begun commemorating it. And by 1900, historian Quintard Taylor notes, Juneteenth had become more widely celebrated among black Texans than the Fourth of July. Read more | Abraham Lincoln: the greatest US president? Resistance through celebration The holiday served as part of freedpeople’s self-fashioning. Juneteenth is now a national American holiday, but it began as a Texas Emancipation Day, conceived and institutionalised by the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Black women’s clubs, churches and civic organisations marshalled resources to secure spaces for public celebration. In Houston in 1872, for example, they purchased 10 acres that they named ‘Emancipation Park’ and began holding annual celebrations. Black residents in Austin did the same in the early 1900s. In these cities and elsewhere, African Americans celeb…

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"These women transformed his understanding of the world": making Malcolm X
type: item
date: 2025-06-10T08:00:15.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
description: Malcolm X became one of the most influential leaders in the US civil rights movement – thanks largely, explains Ashley D Farmer, to the women who shaped his life and ideas
encoded: On a balmy spring evening in Omaha, Nebraska, Louise Little answered a knock at the door. She must have been terrified when she opened it and saw several knights of the Ku Klux Klan on horseback, demanding that she produce her husband at once. Louise knew she was in trouble. She was all alone save her three children – Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert – and pregnant with her fourth child, Malcolm. But as the Klansmen brandished their guns, Louise stood her ground. She refused to let them see fear in her eyes or tell them her husband’s whereabouts. In the end, the men left with a threat on their lips as they rode off into the night. Such moments were par for the course for Louise Little, the first of many black women who taught, mentored and shaped the man now known as Malcolm X. Malcolm was born 100 years ago – on 19 May 1925, in Omaha. He was Grenadian-born Louise and Georgia-born Earl Little’s fourth child together. It is easy to see why Earl was smitten with Malcolm’s mother: Louise had travelled extensively, she spoke multiple languages and she was politically engaged. Malcolm’s parents met in Montreal, Canada at a gathering of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). A black nationalist from Jamaica, Garvey captured the black masses with his calls for race pride, and the right for black people all over the world to control their communities and determine their futures. The pair married in 1919, relocated briefly to Philadelphia and then moved to Omaha. By the time Malcolm was born, the Littles were well-known nationalist organisers in the area. Earl was the president of the local chapter of the UNIA, while Louise served as its secretary, managing memberships and writing for the UNIA’s newspaper, The Negro World. Childhood tragedies The couple worked hard to survive during Jim Crow – the state-sponsored racial caste system that deployed disenfranchisement, racial violence and segregation laws to make black people second-class citizens in almost…

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Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified?
type: item
date: 2025-05-27T14:00:42.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Debate
subject: Evergreen
subject: Hiroshima
description: For years debate has raged over whether the US was right to drop two atomic bombs on Japan during the final weeks of the Second World War. The first bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, resulted in a total death toll of around 140,000. The second, which hit Nagasaki on 9 August, killed around 50,000 people. But was the US justified? We put the question to a panel of expert historians...
encoded: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in August 1945 brought the Second World War to a sudden and devastating close, and sparked a moral and historical debate that has continued since. Well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed instantly or in the immediate aftermath, with many more suffering from long-term effects of radiation exposure. The decision by US president Truman to authorise the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was unprecedented. It marked the first (and so far only) time that atomic bombs have been used in warfare. The justification offered at the time was that the bombings would force Japan’s surrender and avoid a prolonged and bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland. Yet the question remains: was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? Historians continue to debate the military necessity, political motivations and moral implications of the bombings. Was it a strategic decision to end the war quickly and save lives? Or a demonstration of power aimed as much at the Soviet Union as at Japan? Here, a panel of historians offers their perspectives on one of the most controversial chapters of the Second World War, and considers whether the US was right to bomb Japan in 1945. Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? “Yes. Truman had little choice” – Antony Beevor Few actions in war are morally justifiable. All a commander or political leader can hope to assess is whether a particular course of action is likely to reduce the loss of life. Faced with the Japanese refusal to surrender, President Truman had little choice. His decision was mainly based on the estimate of half a million Allied casualties likely to be caused by invading the home islands of Japan. There was also the likely death rate from starvation for Allied PoWs and civilians as the war dragged on well into 1946. Read more | The Manhattan Project: your guide to the building of the first atomic bomb What Truman did not …

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Was JFK about to be re-elected? An expert weighs in on the president's lost second term
type: item
date: 2025-05-07T15:05:35.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
subject: US presidents
description: Historian Mark White explores whether John F Kennedy would have defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964 – and how his second term might have changed history
encoded: On 22 November 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. At the time of his death, Kennedy had served fewer than three years as president, but within US politics, he was a figure who already loomed large, his reputation forged by savvy political instincts, his carefully formulated image, and his demonstrable grit as a statesman during the escalations of the Cold War. On that day in Dallas, it’s easy to suppose that Kennedy may have felt justifiably confident about the prospect of the 1964 election that loomed on the horizon. But would the president truly have been re-elected in a landslide? What would a second term have looked like? And how might the USA – and the world – have changed if he had lived? On the podcast | JFK: the man behind the myths “I think Kennedy […] would've beaten his opponent Barry Goldwater comfortably,” says historian Mark White, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “He averaged 70% approval ratings,” which was “the highest of any president in modern recorded history.” A likely second term Heading into the 1964 presidential electoral campaign, Kennedy remained hugely popular. In particular, his handling of international crises had bolstered his image as a steady foreign policy leader – a necessary thing in the burgeoning nuclear age. Though his legislative progress domestically was widely perceived to be slower, his youthful energy and rhetorical appeal had galvanised much of the electorate, allowing them to be patient with the president’s initiatives. In contrast, his likely Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater, was a hardline conservative senator from Arizona whose campaign would later mark a sharp rightward shift in Republican politics. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act, advocated for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and promoted a minimal federal government – a platform that alienated many moderate voters (the kinds of voters that Richard Nixon had wooed in his hotly contested 1960 election battle agains…

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Could America have won the Vietnam War? The mistakes that denied the US victory
type: item
date: 2025-05-02T12:15:25.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: When US forces entered Vietnam, the nation's leaders believed they could contain communism and secure victory. Instead, they found themselves trapped in a war that drained resources, divided the country and ultimately ended in failure. But was the campaign doomed from the start? Geoffrey Wawro explains
encoded: Could America have won the Vietnam War? In a word: no. There were many reasons for this. In the first place, America’s Vietnam War was fought in the shadow of China and the Soviet Union. Every major move the Americans made in Southeast Asia had to be plotted against the possibility of Chinese or Soviet intervention in the war. The three presidents who conducted America into Vietnam – Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, and Lyndon B Johnson – all had the Korean War (1950-53) on their mind. It had been a pivotal moment in the Cold War, marked by North Korea's invasion of South Korea – and the United States had been poised to win it in October 1950. But then China had launched 300,000 troops into North Korea, snaring the United States in almost three years of bloody trench warfare that destroyed Harry Truman’s presidency. What was the Vietnam War? The Vietnam War (1954–75) was fought between the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam (known as the Viet Cong) on one side (with additional backing from China and the Soviet Union), and the government of South Vietnam and its key ally, the United States, on the other. Read more | Your guide to the Vietnam War The China threat Though there were Cold War incentives to contain communism, with Senator Joe McCarthy’s “Red Scare” having only recently flickered out, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson feared that invading North Vietnam, to defeat the state sponsor of South Vietnam’s Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas, would almost certainly bring in the Chinese again. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-514682786-6a18251.jpg" width="1024" height="685" alt="Military policemen capture a Vietcong guerrilla after a surprise attack on the United States embassy and South Vietnamese government buildings in Saigon on January 31, 1968." title="Military policemen capture a Viet Cong guerrilla after a surprise attack on the United States embassy and South Vietnamese gove…

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“Risks he should never have taken”: a historian’s take on JFK’s sexual waywardness
type: item
date: 2025-04-22T13:18:22.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
subject: US presidents
description: Did JFK’s extra-marital affairs risk national security? While some might argue that a president’s private life is irrelevant when considering his legacy as a leader, historian Mark White believes that Kennedy’s sexual dalliances need to be considered as more than just salacious anecdotes
encoded: John F Kennedy holds a prestigious position in the American imagination – a man of wartime heroism, soaring rhetoric and youthful charm who embodied postwar optimism. It’s an image made even more potent by his untimely death, killed in Dallas when he was 46 years old. Yet behind Kennedy’s charismatic exterior lies a more troubling portrait: a president whose reckless extramarital affairs risked not only his marriage but also national security. Historian Mark White spoke on the HistoryExtra podcast about grappling with conflicting pictures of Kennedy in his biography of the president, Icon, Libertine, Leader. On the podcast | JFK: the man behind the myths While he credits Kennedy as a capable and, at times, transformational leader, in contrast, the president’s personal conduct was “like looking at the life of an early Roman emperor.” His “sexual waywardness”, says White, was not a footnote but a defining feature of his private life – and it was carried out with breathtaking audacity. Kennedy’s riskiest affairs As historians in the 1970s and ‘80s sought to unpick the image of Kennedy as a president of impeccable character – an image shored up by JFK’s wife Jackie in the wake of his assassination in 1963 – a “slew of revelations” emerged. “It became clear that he'd been a philanderer of spectacular proportions and had affairs with lots of people,” White explains. And it wasn’t just the volume of his affairs – it was Kennedy’s choices of companions that had dangerous implications. One example is Judith Campbell, who from 1960 to 1962, was simultaneously seeing Kennedy and Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Mafia. Such a close connection to a significant criminal outfit is “obviously a real concern,” says White, calling the Campbell affair “a major misjudgement on his part.” Another of Kennedy’s affairs, with a woman called Ellen Rometsch in 1963, also courted huge risk. Rometsch was a model seemingly from West Germany, who was married to a West German air force serge…

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