20th Century - Getty Images

20th Century

British troops learn to swim in full kit on a training course in May 1944. "A blind man could see something big was about to happen," said one soldier. (Image by Getty Images)

D-Day: why the training was deadlier than the assault

A portrait of Fridtjof Nansen, taken after his daring expedition across Greenland. (Image by Alamy)

My history heroPaul Rose chooses Fridtjof Nansen

A 1954 illustration of a woman wearing nylons. Lightweight, easy to conceal and fiercely sought after, stockings were a favourite with smugglers. (Photo by Bridgeman)

Nylon pirates: the postwar craze for cut-price stockings

Historian and geographer Jared Diamond

Books interview with Jared Diamond: “With countries, as with people, crises attract attention”

Jared Diamond (Photo by Jochen Braun)

Jared Diamond on countries in crisis

Winston Churchill making the famed ‘V’ for Victory sign. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)

Second World War

Winston Churchill facts: 9 things you might not know about the WW2 prime minister

Members of Preston Ladies' Football Club (formerly Dick, Kerr’s Ladies) pose while carrying out leg exercises during practice, March 1937. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

1921: the year when football banned women

Cathy Newman speaks to the History Extra podcast about 'Bloody Brilliant Women'. (Photo by Getty Images)

Women who made modern Britain

Paul Morland (Photo by Fran Monks)

How population has shaped world history

A biplane takes off from Newfoundland

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

Record producer Joe Meek

Joe Meek: the life and legacy of the British record producer

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

Queen Elizabeth II driving her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne at Windsor, 1957. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Why do Brits drive on the left-hand side of the road? Plus 4 other facts about the history of driving in Britain

The Queen reminds Prince William that he should not be kneeling down and talking to George during the Trooping the Colour parade. (Image by JUSTIN TALLIS /AFP/ Getty Images)

Dads with royal duties

Bemused families in Narodychi, Ukraine watch neighbours preparing to leave home shortly after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, just 50 miles (80km) to the east. The Soviet state proposed to re-house rural inhabitants in badly affected districts, but many preferred to stay despite (or perhaps unaware of the danger of) the high radiation detected by Geiger counters. (Photo by Igor Kostin/Sygma via Getty Images)

Eyewitness account: the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster

Amritsar massacre. (Photo by Alamy)

The Amritsar assassin

British spy writer Ian Fleming at his home, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. (Photo by Harry Benson/Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

The man behind James Bond

Anita Anand, photographed in London. "My grandfather was in Amritsar on the day of the massacre. This story has been woven into my DNA," she says. (Photography by Alastair Levy)

Books interview with Anita Anand: “Singh hoped that he would be the catalyst for a revolution”

A protester in a headlock, Southall, April 1979, when a member of the Anti-Nazi League died after being struck on the head. (Images by Getty Images)

1979: Britain in meltdown

Thatcher holds up two shopping bags to show how much less a pound would buy due to inflation under Labour. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Are we still living in Thatcher’s Britain?

Empire Cinema and Casino, Leicester Square, London. It was originally a theatre and ballet venue, before reopening as a music hall in 1884. (Image by Alamy)

History explorer: The birth of British cinema

Wilfred Thesiger in Oman, c1946. "He was able to cope without sleep, and aI don't think he knew pain," says Frank Gardner. (Image by Bridgeman)

My history hero: Frank Gardner chooses Wilfred Thesiger

Gerald Heard had a peculiar idea that the UFOs then being sighted all across the globe, as such as this ‘sighting’ in Sicily, were piloted not by humanoid ETs, as you may have presumed, but by alien super-bees from Mars. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

6 of history’s strangest ever theories about outer space

What is the nature of Margaret Thatcher's legacy?

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

Lady Sarah Frances Elizabeth Armstrong-Jones (centre) – the daughter of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon – was born seventh in line to the throne. (Photo by Terry Fincher/Daily Express/Getty Images)

7 royal babies who were once seventh in line to the throne

Nationalist troops escort captured Republican militia during the Spanish Civil War. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The Spanish Civil War: an avoidable tragedy

A young visitor looks at a painting depicting the Amritsar Massacre

Amritsar: day of shame

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

Perkin Warbeck, an imposter and pretender to the English throne, being humiliated in the stocks before his execution in 1499. Warbeck was used by Henry VII’s Yorkist enemies in an unsuccessful plot to threaten the new Tudor dynasty. (Getty Images)

Imposters in history: 16 famous con-artists and pretenders