Asia

Medal winners on a podium

Q&A Who won the first Olympic medal? And what was the prize before that?

Crown Prince Olav on his ice yacht (Getty Images)

From Hollywood to war heroes: 10 Olympians who were more famous outside sport

Mao Zedong applauds a parade of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. These young militants followed Mao’s call in early August 1966 to defend the party from a ‘white terror’. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Reign of the red terror: Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution

Tokyo Olympics 1964: Yoshinori Sakai prepares to light the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. Born on the day that the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, he was a symbol of Japan’s postwar reconstruction and peace

Tokyo Olympics 1964: the Games that defined Japan

An Indian soldier, emaciated after internment by the Japanese, aboard the British hospital ship 'Oxfordshire' in 1945 (Keystone/Getty Images)

Second World War

The untold story of India’s WW2 prisoners of war

Professor Michael Wert responds to listener questions and online search queries about the samurai of feudal Japan. (Image by Getty Images)

Samurai: everything you wanted to know

Mark Atwood Lawrence responds to readers’ questions about the United States’ failure to stem the advance of communism in Vietnam. (Image by Getty Images)

The Vietnam War: everything you wanted to know

A lithographic Victorian trade card promoting the Forepaugh circus' new white elephant, Buffalo, New York, circa 1880. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)

Q&A Why do we say ‘white elephant’?

Charles Sobhraj (centre) pictured in 2011, while trying to sue the Nepalese government for unlawful imprisonment

The real history of The Serpent: the true story of Charles Sobhraj

The 'Alexander Mosaic' showing Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great: all you need to know about the empire builder and military genius

100 women who changed the world

Women’s history podcasts: 18 HistoryExtra episodes not to miss

In this lecture, Michael Wood uses the stories of five individuals from across the centuries to cast light on China’s rich and varied history

General ancient history

Voices of China

A Red Cross worker in the United States, 1918

Spanish flu: the virus that changed the world

US marines advance up Iwo Jima's beaches

Second World War

The battle for Iwo Jima: why did it happen and why was it so hard fought?

Graham Hutchings discusses how China was convulsed by the communist revolution of 1949. (Image by Getty Images)

Chaos & communism: China’s 1949 revolution