North America

Out of the closets and into the streets: the legacy of the Stonewall Riots

How wild was the Wild West?

My history heroTracy Austin chooses Arthur Ashe

TravelExplore Nashville, Tennessee: the beating heart of the American south

Anna WhitelockConfronting slavery’s legacy

10 photographs that made history

To the point: soldiers prepare themselves for hand-to-hand combat by learning bayonet skills. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

The road to D-Day: the masterplan

Members of a British parachute regiment consult their maps during a training exercise just weeks before D-Day. Training was intensive – and dangerous. (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post /Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The road to D-Day: getting ready for action

MK Ultra: the secrets of the CIA's mind-control programme

Charlton Hetson races a chariot in Ben-Hur

Wacky races: 10 weird and wonderful contests through history

The first state visit by American President George W Bush in 2003 was highly controversial, attracting protesters opposed to the involvement of the United States and Britain in the Iraq War. Here the president is pictured with the Queen in 2008. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)

From pageantry to controversy: a brief history of state visits

Troops of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade (Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry Highlanders) going ashore, Normandy, France, 6 June 1944. (Credit: Gilbert Alexander Milne/Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-122765)

Second World War

“Free people everywhere should remember them”: the Canadians’ role in D-Day

Sergeant Stubby, an American dog who served as the mascot of America's 102nd Infantry Regiment during the First World War. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)

First World War

Sergeant Stubby of the First World War: the heroic story of America’s most decorated war dog

Beyond Normandy: the global war

1960s model. (Photo by Alamy)

Women in the 1960s

A biplane takes off from Newfoundland

Alcock and Brown: the first aviators to fly across the Atlantic

US baseball legend, Joseph 'Shoeless Joe' Jackson, who was banned from the game along with seven other players after admitting that they had accepted money to lose the 1919 World Series.

“Say it ain’t so”: The ‘Black Sox’ scandal that rocked American baseball

A battle of wills: why the South lost the American Civil War

President Abraham Lincoln visiting soldiers encamped at the Civil War battlefield of Antietam in Maryland, 1 October 1862. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

The American Civil War: 7 facts and fictions

A US soldier teaching two junior 'rookie' recruits how to clean a gun during the First World War

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about America’s entry and involvement in the First World War

A joint Franco-Native Indian raid left 56 residents of Deerfield, a small township in north-western Massachusetts, dead. (Alamy)

America: Brave new world or accident?

How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James?

A French print by the Thierry bothers depicting the appearance of the landscape and inhabitants of the Moon

How to carry off a great hoax

Viking ships sailing towards unknown land. (Photo by Getty Images)

The global Vikings

A painting depicting the Mexican-American War of 1846–48: battle of Buena Vista, also known as battle of Angostura. Since that traumatic war, the US-Mexico bilateral relationship "has experienced sharp ups-and-downs; but there have also been underlying continuities," says Professor Alan Knight. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Peace, stability and pragmatism: a brief history of US-Mexico relations

Comedian Rhona Cameron and political activist Peter Tatchell help to hold a banner at an LGBT Pride event in London, 1998. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The historians’ view: is the world finally waking up to transgender issues?

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve

Captain James Lawrence of the Chesapeake is wounded

The capture of the Chesapeake: how the British Royal Navy rescued its reputation in the War of 1812

An example of the Zimmermann Telegram

First World War

The Zimmermann telegram: the telegram that brought America into the First World War

'Soccer' and 'diaper' are among many 'American' words that are more faithful to the old English tongue than those used in Britain today, says James Evans. Other 'Americanisms' were used in Shakespeare's plays before the first English colony was established in Virginia. (L to R: Photos by Hulton Archive/Getty Images; DeAgostini/Getty Images; Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From candy to diapers: the purity of American English