North America

How close to nuclear war did the Cuban Missile Crisis get?

Prohibition: everything you wanted to know

Outlander: the real history that inspired the time-slip drama

Alcohol is poured away into a New York sewer during the prohibition era, c1920

QuizProhibition: how much do you know about the US ban on booze?

Young civil rights activists sit in defiance at a ‘whites only’ lunch counter in Oklahoma City, 1958

Jim Crow in the United States: a brief guide to the racial segregation laws

In their own words: the team behind Apollo 11 describe the 1969 mission to the Moon

A broker looks at his screens at Frankfurt's stock exchange on 15 September 2008. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2008 financial crisis explained

A flapper shows off her hidden bottles of alcohol

The morning after: the impact of prohibition

Tales of Irish emigration

What happened to the Franklin Expedition? The real mystery behind The Terror

Spy plane photos revealed that missile bases were being built on Cuba, prompting the crisis. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

What if...The Cuban Missile Crisis escalated?

A set of dentures belonging to George Washington. The first US president wore fake teeth for much of his life

Q&ADid George Washington have wooden teeth?

The Cold War: everything you wanted to know

Vikings in North America

A 19th-century depiction of HMS Erebus in the ice, by François Etienne Musin. What exactly happened to the ship and its crew remains a mystery. (Picture by Alamy)

The Franklin Expedition: what happened on the ill-fated Victorian voyage?

The women who fought back against Hollywood

Engraved portrait of George Washington, the first president of the United States of America

George Washington: your guide to the war hero, founding father, first US president and slave owner

The space race: everything you wanted to know

The space race: everything you wanted to know

A women drives oxen pulling a loaded wagon train through the Black Hills (in South Dakota or Wyoming) in 1887

From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West

The forgotten mothers of civil rights leaders

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the US

Elizabeth BlackwellThe ‘first female doctor’, who entered medicine to prove a point

Cary Grant: from humble beginnings to Hollywood icon

Speech of Adolf Hitler to the Reichstag inthe Kroll Opera in Berlin after the Declaration of war to the USA, in addition to the lectern to the right: Press Chief Otto Dietrich and the personal adjutant of Hitler Albert Bormann the Brigade Commander o

Second World War

"One of the most puzzling decisions of WW2": Ian Kershaw on why Hitler declared war on America

Harriet Tubman (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad: how one woman saved hundreds from hell

RuPaul – who produces and presents the reality TV show bearing his name – performs during a Gay Rights March in Washington, DC, April 1993. Over 500,000 LGBTQ+ activists and allies participated in a gathering organised to end discrimination. (Photo by Porter Gifford/Liaison)

From Fanny and Stella to Ru Paul's Drag Race: a short history of drag

Supporters of Donald Trump protest in Pennsylvania as the state’s electoral college casts its votes, December 2020

The constitutional crisis behind 2021's presidential transition

Mourning Martin Luther King JrThe life and legacy of the civil rights leader

When British pop invaded America

Statue of Leif Erikson (Leifur Erikssonn) in front of Eric the Red's home. (Photo by Draper White, Getty Images)

Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland

Richard Nixon resigns

Which US presidents have been impeached? A brief history of presidential impeachment