HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-09-04T09:27:38.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: After Hiroshima: the atomic plague
items: The Age of Spectacle: Live Aid at 40
items: "We sang, we danced and we all held hands": celebrating VE Day
items: What was the Chappaquiddick incident?
items: The battle of Marston Moor: what happened?
items: Death in the New Forest: how King William II met his demise
items: A big day in history: Mary Ann Nichols becomes the first victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’ (31 August 1888)
items: A big day in history: Hannibal smashes his foes "at the very gates of Rome"
items: A big day in history: Rioters give East Anglia's rich and respectable a fright
items: A big day in history: Nevsky's Russians crush the Teutonic Knights

After Hiroshima: the atomic plague
type: item
date: 2025-09-08T08:00:06.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: A big day in history
subject: Death
subject: Hiroshima
description: In the wake of the nuclear attacks on Japan, the official Allied line was that radiation sickness was not a danger. Yet, as Steve O’Hagan reveals, the first western journalist to witness the effects on the people of Hiroshima told a very different story
encoded: At 6am on 2 September 1945, Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett boarded a crowded train heading south-west from the wreckage of war-ravaged Tokyo. He was disobeying strict orders that no westerners should venture outside the Japanese capital – and, though he did not yet realise it, he was undertaking the most momentous journey of his life. The Second World War had ended. However, Japan had not formally surrendered, and American occupation was still to come. Japan’s cities lay in ruins, and Burchett couldn’t even be sure that the train line to his destination, over 400 miles away, was intact. He was also alone and in great danger – hence the Colt .45 pistol in his suitcase. Resentment towards the Allies ran high. Crammed around Burchett in his carriage were Japanese Army officers bearing samurai swords. Although he spoke almost no Japanese, Burchett could feel the animosity in the soldiers’ venomous stares. Also among the passengers was an American priest, who nervously warned Burchett that one wrong move could cost them their lives. Should they smile or shake hands, it could be taken by the Japanese officers as a sign of gloating over the Japanese surrender to the Allies that was being formalised later that day. Burchett later recalled glancing nervously at the soldiers: their hands seemed to toy with the hilts of their swords. As the train plunged in and out of long, dark tunnels, he was convinced that he could hear the sound of steel being unsheathed from scabbards. Thankfully, the assault he feared never came. But even as the train reached its destination some 20 hours after setting out, his tension did not abate. He was arriving in Hiroshima – the city that, four weeks earlier, had been nigh obliterated by the world’s first ever nuclear bomb attack. In one of the 20th century’s most remarkable feats of investigative reporting, Burchett was about to become the first western journalist to bear witness to the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. A scramble to contr…

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The Age of Spectacle: Live Aid at 40
type: item
date: 2025-08-06T08:00:21.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: A big day in history
subject: Historical events
description: When Bob Geldof exhorted audiences to fill Wembley Stadium and empty their pockets for famine relief in Ethiopia, he changed the face of charity fundraising – and of live music. On its 40th anniversary, David Hepworth – one of the BBC presenters on the day – explores the legacy of Live Aid
encoded: If not quite the moon landing or the shooting of JFK, 13 July 1985 remains a day on which most people who were alive remember exactly where they were – a day marked by a seismic social and cultural shift. The defining moment came around seven o’clock in the evening. Queen, a rock band whose star had seemed to be on the wane, was performing ‘We Will Rock You’ at Wembley Stadium. The audience seemed almost possessed – overwhelmed at simply being part of the occasion. Frontman Freddie Mercury pointed the cameraman at the crowd – more than 70,000 people clapping in perfect synchrony, hands above their heads. In this instant was born a new age of musical performance that would be notable as much for what things looked like as for the way they sounded. The road to today’s special-effects-packed, big-ticket concert experience was laid at Live Aid. The Age of Spectacle started here. Essential viewing What was to climax with a TV event that everybody watched because they wanted to began with a TV event that many watched because they had little choice. That was Michael Buerk’s report from the camps on the plain of Korem in Ethiopia’s Tigray region where, in October 1984, many thousands were dying as a result of famine and war. Bob Geldof was at home on the evening of Buerk’s broadcast – because his career as the lead singer of The Boomtown Rats was no longer quite as chart-busting as it had been. Moved and enraged by what he saw, he took the prodigious energy that would ordinarily have been put into plugging a new single, and dragooned his pop mates into singing on a charity record. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-90764827-2c6c58c.jpg" width="1772" height="1181" alt="A man in a stripey shirt stands around with several young children. The children are thin, barefoot and mostly dressed in cut-offs" title="Photojournalist Mohamed Amin and BBC reporter Michael Buerk at Korem relief camp, Ethiopia, in 1984. Buerk’s report on…

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"We sang, we danced and we all held hands": celebrating VE Day
type: item
date: 2025-05-08T08:00:34.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: A big day in history
subject: Wartime Britain
description: It’s 80 years since Britain erupted in joy at the news that the war in Europe was over. But how did those who lived through VE Day remember it? With the help of the BBC WW2 People’s War archive, John Willis reveals a day of partying, remembrance and continuing sacrifice
encoded: The long and brutal war in Europe was finally over. At 2.41am on 7 May 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender agreement at General Eisenhower’s HQ in Reims, 80 miles north-east of Paris. Later that day, the BBC announced the news and the first celebrations began. Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared the following day a national holiday, VE Day (Victory in Europe), and checked the supply of beer was large enough to satisfy the thirst of a happy nation. In Southampton, VE Day opened with a symphony of blaring ships’ horns shortly after midnight. Later, beacons blazed, bunting fluttered in the afternoon sun and joyful parties echoed around every corner of Britain. Children tied effigies of Hitler to lampposts or burned the führer on bonfires. At 3pm, Churchill broadcast from Downing Street: “My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not a victory for any party or class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole.” But Churchill also reminded the partying millions that the conflict was not yet over. A fanatical, undefeated Japan still controlled swathes of territory in the far east. In 2005, the BBC marked the 60th anniversary of VE Day by setting up a huge project called the WW2 People’s War. With help from thousands of volunteers, charities, libraries and museums, the corporation collected an astonishing 47,000 testimonies, both from those who had been serving in the armed forces and from the home front. This was not history as seen from the lofty perspective of politicians or generals, diplomats or historians. Rather, the project gathered the memories of ordinary British men and women – a ground-floor history. The WW2 People’s War (and my book of the same name) stand as comprehensive accounts by those who fought, grieved, loved and survived through years of conflict – and how they reacted when the fighting in Europe was over. Most of the testimonies on the following pages are taken from this archive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk…

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What was the Chappaquiddick incident?
type: item
date: 2024-08-05T11:00:00.000Z
creator: Dominic Sandbrook
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: A big day in history
description: On the night of 18 July 1969, a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne drowned after a car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy plunged into a tidal channel. Dominic Sandbrook details the tragedy, Kennedy's actions and the ensuing scandal that engulfed the Kennedy family, and came to be known as the Chappaquiddick incident…
encoded: In the summer of 1969, Edward Kennedy was riding high. Tall, handsome and athletic, the 37-year-old senator from Massachusetts was the last great hope of the Kennedy family. His brother Jack had fallen to an assassin’s bullet in 1963, and Robert had been shot while campaigning for the presidency in 1968. The newspapers talked of a ‘Kennedy curse’. But when Ted Kennedy’s fellow Democrats picked him as the youngest ever Senate Majority Whip in January 1969, his political destiny seemed certain. As the future Democratic presidential candidate in 1972, he would surely recapture the White House for the Kennedy family. What happened at Chappaquiddick on 18 July 1969? In July 1969, Kennedy took part in a regatta off Martha’s Vineyard, a summer playground for New England’s elite. On the evening of the 18th, the senator took the ferry to the neighbouring island of Chappaquiddick. There his staff had arranged a party to thank the six ‘boiler room girls’ who had worked on Robert’s ill-fated presidential campaign the previous summer. It was a fine evening, and the drink flowed merrily. At some point between 11 and midnight, Kennedy slipped away, taking one of the women, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, with him. Later he said that he was driving her to her hotel – though she left her handbag and room key behind. About an hour later, a policeman saw a car streaking along an unpaved dirt road. It was Kennedy and Kopechne. Lost in the darkness, Kennedy turned down an unpaved dirt road, and at the end his car slipped off the road and plunged into a deep tidal channel. It takes little imagination to picture the scene: the car falling and turning on its head; the water roaring in; the panic of the two passengers, pounding at the windows. “I remember thinking as the cold water rushed in around my head that I was for certain drowning,” Kennedy said later. “Then water entered my lungs and I actually felt the sensation of drowning. But somehow I struggled to the surface alive.” Mary Jo Kope…

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The battle of Marston Moor: what happened?
type: item
date: 2021-07-02T08:50:05.000Z
creator: Dominic Sandbrook
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: A big day in history
subject: Dominic Sandbrook
description: Dominic Sandbrook explores the events of 2 July 1644 – the date that Oliver Cromwell's intervention in the battle of Marston Moor proved decisive in the English Civil Wars
encoded: At seven o'clock on the evening of 2 July 1644, Prince Rupert of the Rhine gazed out across the low-lying field of Marston Moor, just outside York. At his back were some 17,000 royalist troops, many exhausted after a long day's march. In front of him, across the fields, were the lines of his combined Parliamentarian and Scottish adversaries, at least 20,000 strong, their armour still glinting in the summer twilight. Rain was in the air; a thunderstorm was brewing. The king's nephew was anxious for battle, but perhaps it could wait until the morning. Hearing the Parliamentarian army singing psalms, he decided to call it a day and told his men to break for supper. Only moments later, the allied army struck. As thunder rolled across the moor, the Scottish and Roundhead allies began to stream down the gentle slope, picking up speed, adrenaline coursing through their horses’ veins. After years of stalemate, the great battle for control of the north, the decisive battle of the Civil War, was under way. Oliver Cromwell: the secret of his military genius At first it seemed that, as so many times before, Rupert’s forces would win the day. On the allied right, Sir Thomas Fairfax’s men struggled to get across the ditches between them and their royalist opponents, many falling under a hail of musket fire. Spotting the enemy musketeers, Fairfax wrote later, he decided “to charge them. We were a long time engaged with one another, but at last we routed that part of their Wing.” He turned to get back to his remaining men, “but that part of the Enemy which stood, perceiving the disorder they were in, had charged and routed them, before I could get to them.” As darkness drew in and the allied right crumpled, the royalists began to make headway in the centre, too. More than half of the Scottish infantry and many of the Parliamentarian forces panicked and ran; for a moment, it looked as though the day was lost for the allied cause. But salvation came from the left, where Lieutenant-Ge…

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Death in the New Forest: how King William II met his demise
type: item
date: 2020-08-02T02:05:00.000Z
creator: Dominic Sandbrook
subject: Membership
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: A big day in history
description: Dominic Sandbrook explores the events of 2 August 1100, when William Rufus – third son of William the Conqueror – was the victim of a hunting party gone awry…
encoded: In the early hours of Thursday, 2 August 1100, the second Norman king of England, William Rufus, was asleep at his New Forest hunting lodge when he had a nightmare. According to one chronicler, he dreamt "that he was let blood by a surgeon, and that the stream, reaching to heaven, clouded the light and intercepted the day". In another version, William dreamed that he met the Devil, who said that he was looking forward to seeing him the next day. Either way, waking with a start, the king shouted for his servants to bring a light. It was obvious that the dream had seriously worried him. By lunchtime, however, William had recovered his spirits. It was a lovely sunny day: a perfect day, his friends suggested, for an afternoon in the saddle. While they were getting ready, an armourer presented six arrows to the king. William took four for himself; the others he handed to one of his companions, the Anglo-French nobleman Walter Tirel, Lord of Poix, who had a reputation as a fine marksman. "Bon archer, bonnes flèches," Rufus said with a smile: "Good arrows for a good shot." As William Rufus galloped into the woods that afternoon, he must have looked the very model of a medieval king. Forty years old, the third son of William the Conqueror, he cut an imposing figure. The chronicler William of Malmesbury described him as “well set; his complexion florid, his hair yellow; of open countenance; different coloured eyes, varying with certain glittering specks; of astonishing strength, though not very tall, and his belly rather projecting”. Hot-tempered and sometimes boorish, he was nevertheless a good-humoured, generous man, who liked nothing better than drinking and joking with his cronies. Contemporaries were often shocked by his blasphemy and disregard for the church, as well as by rumours of homosexual goings-on. But by medieval standards his regime seemed eminently stable. It was late afternoon when William Rufus divided up his hunting party. Most of his courtiers remained wi…

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A big day in history: Mary Ann Nichols becomes the first victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’ (31 August 1888)
type: item
date: 2018-08-31T04:00:56.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: A big day in history
subject: Dominic Sandbrook
subject: Victorian crime and punishment
description: On 31 August 1888, the body of a homeless women, brutally murdered and mutilated, was found in a Whitechapel backstreet. Here, as part of our 'big day in history' series, Dominic Sandbrook explores the discovery of Jack the Ripper's first victim, Mary Ann Nichols
encoded: As London’s bells rang in the last day of August 1888, rain was falling. It had been one of the wettest summers in living memory, and there was thunder in the air. On the horizon a fierce red glow seared the sky above Shadwell, where a huge fire had broken out in the dry dock. Some time between one and two o’clock that morning, a woman called Mary Ann Nichols, known to her friends as ‘Polly’, was thrown out of the kitchen of the shabby lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields. Fate had dealt Polly a rough hand. A 43-year-old mother of five children, she was separated from her husband and now drifted from one workhouse to another, scratching a meagre existence from handouts and casual prostitution. Read more: Your guide to Jack the Ripper 6 notorious unsolved crimes from history The 10 worst Britons in history Short of the four pence she needed to pay for a bed in the lodging house, Polly once more found herself on the street. “Never mind,” she said, gesturing at the velvet-trimmed straw bonnet she was wearing. “I’ll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now.” The implication was clear: she was heading back out to find a punter. An hour or so later, Polly was seen by one of her roommates on the corner of Whitechapel Road, clearly drunk. She had made her doss money three times over, she boasted, but had already spent it on gin and was off to make some more. That was the last time Mary Ann Nichols was seen alive. At 3.40am, a carter found her lying in the darkened doorway of a stable. Her throat had been slit and her body horribly mutilated. The murderer who would later be dubbed ‘Jack the Ripper’ had claimed his first victim. Dominic Sandbrook is a historian and presenter. This article was first published on History Extra in August 2016

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A big day in history: Hannibal smashes his foes "at the very gates of Rome"
type: item
date: 2013-05-31T23:00:00.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: A big day in history
description: Dominic Sandbrook explores the events of 21 June 217 BC
encoded: In June 217 BC, Rome waited for news. For almost half a century, the republic had been locked in a bitter rivalry with its chief Mediterranean competitor, Carthage. Now war had broken out again, and this time the outcome seemed terrifyingly uncertain. In a stunning manoeuvre, the Carthaginians’ 30-year-old commander, Hannibal, had led tens of thousands of troops, cavalry and elephants north from modern-day Spain and across the Alps into Italy. In December Hannibal had crushed a Roman army in the Po Valley, and by the spring of 217 he was in central Italy. Never had Rome’s survival seemed in greater danger. Even Hannibal’s enemies recognised in him a worthy opponent. Centuries later, the Roman historian Livy told his readers that Hannibal took after his famous father, Hamilcar, with “the same bright look; the same fire in his eye, the same trick of countenance and features”. Crossing the Apennines, the Carthaginian general had lost an eye to conjunctivitis and thousands of men to disease. But nothing dimmed his desire for victory. The problem was that Hannibal was fighting on foreign soil. The Romans could afford to wait and hope that he ran out of food and allies. His priority, therefore, was to lure them into battle. It was Hannibal’s good fortune that the Roman commander, the consul Gaius Flaminius, was nowhere near his equal. Flaminius was camped at Arretium, but Hannibal had a plan to winkle him out. “He calculated,” wrote the Roman historian Polybius, “that, if he passed the camp and made a descent into the district beyond, Flaminius (partly for fear of popular reproach and partly out of personal irritation) would be unable to endure watching passively the devastation of the country but would spontaneously follow him… and give him opportunities for attack.” Hannibal was right. As the countryside went up in flames, Flaminius chafed at the bit. Some of his officers urged him to wait for reinforcements, but Flaminius was worried about his reputation. “They should …

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A big day in history: Rioters give East Anglia's rich and respectable a fright
type: item
date: 2013-04-30T23:00:00.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: A big day in history
description: Dominic Sandbrook considers the events of 22 May 1816
encoded: This article first appeared in the May 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine In the early months of 1816, eastern England seethed with discontent. The war against Napoleon was over, but the cost of victory had fallen hard on the common people. For the men returning, proud and weary, from Wellington’s victories on the continent, there was little comfort at home. Taxes were high and prices prohibitive: in just 12 months, the price of wheat effectively doubled. And with the economy in the doldrums, jobs were in short supply. “The state of the labouring poor,” admitted one response to a circular from the Board of Agriculture, “is very deplorable, and arises entirely from the want of employment, which they are willing to seek, but the farmer cannot afford to furnish.” At the beginning of May, disturbances broke out across East Anglia. On the 20th, local magistrates meeting at the Crown in Downham Market were temporarily besieged by protesters demanding decent wages. And on the 22nd, frustration turned into open violence. That evening several dozen villagers met at the Globe Inn, just 10 miles away in the village of Littleport. And as one drink followed another, tempers flared. As one villager blew a horn, calling others to join the throng, his comrades rampaged through the village streets, throwing stones and smashing shop windows. They broke into houses and threw the residents out; they stole property and hurled furniture into the street. Littleport’s vicar, the Reverend John Vachell, tried to get them to disperse by reading the Riot Act. But since Vachell was also a local magistrate, much hated for his severe sentences, his moral authority was non-existent. Heckled by the mob, he took refuge inside the vicarage, waving a gun and threatening to fire on anyone who approached – hardly, it has to be said, a very Christian way of carrying on. Shortly before midnight, however, three men broke into the house and managed to disarm him. And while the rioters were rifling through t…

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A big day in history: Nevsky's Russians crush the Teutonic Knights
type: item
date: 2013-03-31T23:00:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: A big day in history
subject: Medieval battles
description: Dominic Sandbrook explores the events of 5 April 1242
encoded: This article was first published in the April 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine It remains one of the most exciting scenes in cinematic history. As the music swells, a vast army of knights charges across a frozen lake, their banners streaming in the wind. On the opposite shore, the ranks of pikemen stand nervous but steadfast, bracing themselves for the inevitable. “The Germans!” one cries. Standing nearby, the Prince of Novgorod remains impassive, his eyes stern, his face grim. As the soundtrack builds, he lowers his visor, embraces his comrades and issues his final instructions. The horsemen approach; the defenders lower their pikes – and then, with a terrible crash, the two armies engage. Best known for its unforgettable soundtrack by Sergei Prokofiev, the film Alexander Nevsky was released in 1938. Its director, Sergei Eisenstein, had not made a film for 10 years and was working under the shadow of Stalin’s purges. Not surprisingly, therefore, his film closely echoed contemporary European politics, with many critics seeing its hero, Prince Alexander Nevsky, as a thinly veiled portrait of the Soviet dictator. The film’s setting, however, was medieval Novgorod, one of the ancestors of present-day Russia. And at its heart was perhaps the most celebrated battle in all Russian history: the clash between the Teutonic Knights and the men of Novgorod at Lake Peipus in April 1242, better known as the battle on the Ice. In the mid-13th century, what we know today as European Russia was weak and divided, its energies sapped by the onslaught of the Mongols. To the west of the city-state of Novgorod, however, an even deadlier enemy was at hand. Twenty years earlier, in the latest episode in the long-running northern crusades, the knights of the Teutonic Order had begun carving a Christian military realm out of the lands of the pagan Baltic tribes. Up through Prussia and Courland they swept, before carrying the Catholic cause into Livonia and Estonia. And in the last months …

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