North America

The crew of ‘Mi Amigo’. The pilot, 23-year-old Lt John Kriegshauser, can be seen in the front row, far left. (Photo courtesy of Sheffield County Council via American Air Museum in Britain)

Mi Amigo: the deadly WW2 bomber crash in Sheffield play park that killed 10 airmen

A painting of America’s founding fathers inside the National Archives in Washington DC. (Photo by Visions of America/UIG via Getty Images)

A history of United States government shutdowns

BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker with Tony Foulds, 82, who for nearly 75 years has tended the memorial of 10 US airmen who were killed when their B-17 crashed in Endcliffe Park in Sheffield in February 1944. Tony witnessed the crash as an eight-year-old boy. (Photo courtesy of Dan Walker)

Second World War

“We got Tony a fly-past”: how BBC’s Dan Walker organised tribute to WW2 plane crash heroes in Sheffield

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan

How The Beatles broke America

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi.

Did the Cold War ever really end?

Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. (Photo by Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Alexander Hamilton vs Thomas Jefferson: the rise and fall of America's founding fathers

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi

Did the Age of Exploration bring more harm than good?

The unemployed scramble for soup tickets in an engraving from 'The Illustrated London News'. Elizur Wright observed the plight of the poor with a horrified fascination. (Photo by Massachusetts Historical Society/ Bridgeman)

A Victorian Bill Bryson: Elizur Wright's letters from Great Britain

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (L) fights Dick Tiger (R) in Madison Square Garden, New York, 1965 (Photo by Getty Images)

The story of the Hurricane

The bronze statue in Washington DC celebrating Abraham Lincoln's emancipation of slaves shows the 16th president standing over a shackled African American. Lincoln is "one of the towering figures in the story that Americans tell about themselves," writes Lucy Worsley. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would"

A painting depicting George Washington with British soldiers at Yorktown. In the final battle of the war at the siege of Yorktown, writes Jem Duducu, there were nearlyas many French soldiers and sailors as American rebels fighting for colonial independence. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

American history myths: 7 things people get wrong

The president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt and his staff gathered together in New York to find a solution to the economic crisis. 1935. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Icons: the game changers of the 20th century

The "brilliant" Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse in 1935. (Getty Images)

My history hero: Walt Disney (1901-66)

Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552–1618 (Photo by Getty Images)

Walter Ralegh: enemy of the state

What if JFK had lived?

The American Revolutionary War: birth of a superpower

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

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words

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

Max Hastings on Vietnam

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

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis

The Ghent Altarpiece. (Image by Getty Images)

Who were the real monuments men of the Second World War?

Treaty Of Paris, 1783, by Benjamin West (Photo by Granger/REX/Shutterstock)

Brexit and American independence

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

My history hero: Paul Robeson (1898–1976)

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

Seymour Hersh on the US civil rights movement and the Vietnam War

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell on 29 September 2008. A record 778 points were wiped off the Dow Jones that day, as the 2008 financial crisis pushed the world's banking system to the edge of collapse. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The credit crunch: "It's a story of hubris followed by a fall"

The first baby is born to English settlers in the Americas. (Illustration by Lynn Hatzius)

A big day in history: the first baby is born to English settlers in the Americas

A portrait of Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's funniest jokes

Jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis, shown here in 1969, was central to the story of jazz. (Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)

My history hero: Miles Davis (1926–91)

Spies through the ages podcast

Spies through the ages

Making the modern world

Brass band playing during Mardi Gras in Mew Orleans

ExploreNew Orleans, United States: Louisiana's 'big easy'