HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-04-07T12:07:30.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The female codebreakers of Bletchley Park
items: Armistice Day: what does it commemorate? Why are poppies worn? Plus 4 more things you need to know
items: Why are there three lions on the shirts of the English football teams?
items: Your guide to Neanderthals, plus 7 fascinating facts
items: The history of Shrove Tuesday: why do we eat pancakes?
items: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars
items: Your ultimate guide to Pompeii, plus 8 fascinating facts about the ancient Roman city
items: Who was Cleopatra? Her life, her love affairs and her children, plus 6 little-known facts
items: A brief history of International Women's Day: what is it and why do we celebrate it?
items: 14 surprising facts about the history of medicine

The female codebreakers of Bletchley Park
type: item
date: 2025-04-01T14:50:42.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Bletchley Park
subject: Family and parenting
description: Historian Tessa Dunlop shines a light on the secret and undervalued work of the women of Bletchley Park, without whom the codebreaking successes of the Second World War could not have happened
encoded: Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire was one of Britain's most famous institutions during the Second World War, home to codebreaking triumphs that turned the tide against the Nazi regime. Britain’s codebreaking operation has been dominated by a male narrative – a star-studded cast of 20th-century brain boxes, led by mathematician Alan Turing. His outstanding role in the creation of the bombe machine, an electromechanical testing device essential for unravelling German Enigma encoded messages, was hugely significant. It is a feat perhaps only rivalled by that of Tommy Flowers, the engineer who designed the even more advanced Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. Yet Bletchley Park depended on the heft of a predominantly female workforce, not least Turing's own fiancée, Joan Clarke. The women who worked at Bletchley have often been overlooked in this story because, with the exception of three or four female cryptanalysts, the vast majority of top-end codebreakers during the war were men. The story of how girl power – often school-girl power – turned what began as an eccentric experiment into the world’s most impressive codebreaking factory is less well known, but no less important. Who worked at Britain's wartime intelligence factory In 1938, with war on the horizon, the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) – the precursor to the modern GCHQ – temporarily moved out of London, to avoid bombing raids, but by August 1939, its secret home in Bletchley Park had become permanent. Initially, this fledging operation was staffed by just 186 people. ‘Men of a professor type’, particularly mathematicians were targeted, with early recruits including Turing, Gordon Welchman and Alfred Dillwyn Knox. Their work, however, was supported by an expanding team of chiefly civilian women. Perhaps inevitably at the beginning of the war, Establishment Britain recruited from their own when it came to Bletchley’s secret operations. The German military must never know that Britai…

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Armistice Day: what does it commemorate? Why are poppies worn? Plus 4 more things you need to know
type: item
date: 2024-11-08T11:05:00.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: First World War
subject: Period
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Trends-Anniversary
description: Armistice Day takes place on 11 November each year and marks the end of the First World War. It is a day of commemoration, an occasion to remember the some 8.5 million soldiers who died across the world during the 1914–18 war – as well as those lost in the conflicts that have followed. But how much do you know about it?
encoded: What was Armistice Day? Armistice Day – today known as Remembrance Day in the UK and several Commonwealth countries, and Veterans Day in the USA – commemorates the armistice, an agreement to end the fighting of the First World War as a prelude to peace negotiations, which was signed on 11 November 1918. Peace came into effect six hours after the armistice was signed, at 11am – or at the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". Today, Remembrance Day and Veterans Day events include many traditions that began in commemoration of the losses suffered in the Great War, and have evolved to memorialise those who have since died in conflicts across the world. As we prepare to commemorate the end of the First World War, HistoryExtra brings you six facts about Armistice Day, from the first poppy appeal to the burial of the Unknown Warrior… What was the armistice and when was it signed? At 2.05am on 11 November 1918, after four years of conflict, a German delegation sat down in the railway carriage of Allied supreme commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch, a few hours’ north of Paris. Talks had gone on for three days, and the German delegates were close to accepting the terms for an armistice, a formal agreement to end the fighting. The Germans had been defeated after a brutal summer of attrition; over the past four months, Allied and American forces had overwhelmed the final line of German defences in the battles of the Hundred Days Offensive. On 9 November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II had been persuaded to seek asylum in the Netherlands. Read more | 11 November 1918: The day the world turned upside down In the early hours of 11 November, final terms were laid out and at 5.12am, the armistice was signed. It declared the “cessation of hostilities by land and in the air six hours after the signing”. Terms of the agreement included: the immediate German withdrawal from the territories they had acquired during the conflict; the disarmament and demobilisation of the German m…

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Why are there three lions on the shirts of the English football teams?
type: item
date: 2024-07-10T10:30:10.000Z
creator: Kev Lochun
subject: General Modern
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Sports enthusiast
description: The three lions became a symbol of England thanks to 12th-century warmonger King Henry I who is popularly held to have been unable to speak a word of English himself...
encoded: Why are lions so closely aligned with the English national identity? Why are there three of them? And why do they grace the English football teams' shirts? The desultory answer to the football part is that the three lions are also the emblem of the Football Association, the sport's governing body in England. They have been part of strip since the first official international in 1872, when England played Scotland, ending in a 0-0 draw. Still, that doesn't explain where the FA got them from. Read more: 5 facts about the history of football Why are the three lions on the English football team shirt? The FA did not pick their big cats on a whim – a trio of lions has appeared on the arms of every English (and British) monarch since the late 12th century, and has been flown as a battle standard on English soil and abroad. The story is said to begin with King Henry I, whose arms were single golden lion, rampant (rearing on its hind legs) on a red field. He became a widower in 1118, and perhaps would have remained so had his sole male heir not died at sea in the White Ship disaster of 1120. Read more | How a forgotten law helped women’s football conquer the world – but only by accident The following year, he married Adeliza of Louvain. Her father also used a lion, and so Henry adapted his own arms to include two. Skipping a generation brings us to Henry II, who married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. Her family crest featured a lion as well. It took their son, Richard the Lionheart – a man who, in his entire reign, spent barely six months in England despite being born here – unite the three lions of his forebears into the national symbol it is today. We only know of his arms from two Great Seals, one of which bears the three lions passant-guardant (striding left but facing the observer). Every Plantagenet king used these arms unchanged, lions golden on a field of red, until the ascension of Edward III in 1327. Three lions on a shirt: the alternative explanation There is an al…

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Your guide to Neanderthals, plus 7 fascinating facts
type: item
date: 2024-05-02T10:55:15.000Z
subject: General prehistory
subject: Period
subject: Family and parenting
description: Archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes, expert on Neanderthals, explains how the ancient species relate to modern humans – and she shares seven Neanderthal facts that revolutionise our understanding of them
encoded: What is a Neanderthal? “From an evolutionary point of view, they are hominins,” Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains. “So they are within the Homo genus. For a long time, they were believed to be not much to do with us, in terms of direct ancestry – they were thought to be more like a branch, like cousins. That’s changed now; at least in part, they did contribute to our genetic legacy. That’s where they sit in an evolutionary sense.” Similarly, it was long thought Neanderthals were primarily European hominins. But, Wragg Sykes explains, we now also understand that they’re a Eurasian species, with an extremely wide geographical range. “They extended from Wales through to Siberia, central Asia and in the Near East,” she says. On the podcast | The Neanderthals: everything you wanted to know In terms of when they existed, there’s evidence of proto-Neanderthals emerging 400,000 years ago. “But they only become clearly visible in fossil and archaeological terms around 350,000 years ago,” explains Wragg Sykes. “They appear to disappear from the archaeological record around 40,000 years ago – except their genes did continue, and they’re present in billions of people today.” And why are they so significant? “Neanderthals were the first hominins that we realised were hominins,” she explains. “They’ve been with us for 160 years, all the way through the development of human evolutionary science, so they give a really interesting case study for how our ideas change, how the methods that we use to investigate them have completely transformed as well.” Neanderthal facts: 7 things you need to know according to Dr Wragg Sykes Neanderthals were not ‘missing links’ When they were discovered more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals blew everyone’s minds. The ideas of 19th-century naturalists Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin about natural selection weren’t yet published, and the notion that humans had ancient, vanished relations was scarcely imaginable. While the first Neanderthal fossils were…

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The history of Shrove Tuesday: why do we eat pancakes?
type: item
date: 2024-02-12T09:57:51.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Medieval life
subject: Trends-Anniversary
description: As the nation digs out its frying pans, Julian Humphrys looks at some of the traditions associated with Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day) – including the reason why we traditionally eat and race pancakes
encoded: Why is it called Shrove Tuesday? It comes from the word ‘shrive’, which means to give absolution after hearing confession. So Shrove Tuesday is the day when people went to confession to prepare themselves for Lent, which begins on the following day, Ash Wednesday. Why do we eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday? It was the last chance for a spot of indulgence before 40 days of fasting, and also an opportunity to use up food that couldn’t be eaten during Lent. This included eggs, fat and milk, which were made into pancakes and eaten on that day. The earliest known English recipe dates from the 15th century, although pancakes had been eaten in other countries for centuries before that. In the French-speaking world, the day is known as ‘Mardi Gras’ or ‘Fat Tuesday’. Read more | Biscuit tins, rolling pins and pastry jiggers: a brief history of baking utensils How long have we been having pancake races? A pancake race has been held in Olney in Buckinghamshire since 1445. It supposedly originated when a local woman heard the church bell while she was making pancakes and ran there, frying pan in hand. Another tradition is Westminster School’s annual Pancake Grease where students compete to grab the biggest portion of a pancake tossed over a five-metre bar. In parts of Britain children went ‘shroving’ – singing songs or reciting poetry in exchange for gifts of food. Read more about the most unusual racing contests in history Semla buns: A Swedish treat for Pancake Day A semla is a cardamom-spiced sweet bread roll filled with almond paste and cream. Semlor have been eaten since the 18th century, and enjoyed on Shrove Tuesday. Swedish king Aldolph Frederick died in 1771 apparently after eating 14 semlor – though he had just eaten a huge dinner so maybe we can’t blame it all on the buns. Try the recipe for yourself Are there any other Shrove Tuesday traditions? Two popular Shrove Tuesday activities that are mercifully no longer in vogue were cock-fighting and ‘cock-throwing’. The lat…

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7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars
type: item
date: 2023-10-16T09:50:13.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: Family and parenting
description: Jem Duducu, author of The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts, reveals seven things you might not have known about the 25 years (or so) of conflict...
encoded: What were the Napoleonic Wars? The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts that occurred from 1803 to 1815, fought between France under Napoleon and a series of coalitions of European powers. Though the Napoleonic Wars are often seen as a clash of European powers fighting for dominance over the European continent, in many ways they were also an example of a global conflict before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Napoleonic Wars are usually numbered by the coalitions that were raised against Napoleonic France between 1803 and 1815: The War of the Third Coalition, 1805–06 The War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806–07 The War of the Fifth Coalition, 1809 The War of the Sixth Coalition, 1813–14 The War of the Seventh Coalition, also known as the Hundred Days, 1815 What of the wars of the first and second coalitions? These precede the Napoleonic Wars, both being part of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know Why did the Napoleonic Wars happen? There are many explanations, but you could consider the Napoleonic Wars to be a consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars, which concluded with the 1802 Peace of Amiens. These wars had left France in a commanding strategic position in Western Europe, “something that no other European power could tolerate, because it appeared to threaten their own strategic security”, says Michael Rapport, reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow, who spoke to us about the Napoleonic Wars on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Any peace – which occurred in 1802 through the Treaty of Amiens – was going to be really a truce.” That peace broke down in 1803. “The Peace of Amiens wasn't really honoured by either side,” he says. Neither side really trusted each other.” Who was Napoleon? The Napoleonic Wars are named after a single man – Napoleon Bonaparte. How did a young, inexperienced artillery officer from Corsica rise to such a position of military …

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Your ultimate guide to Pompeii, plus 8 fascinating facts about the ancient Roman city
type: item
date: 2023-08-21T09:32:41.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Life in ancient Rome
description: After the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was lost for centuries. Today, it is one of the world's most famous – and fascinating – archaeological sites. Learn more about its history from two expert historians
encoded: How and when was Pompeii destroyed? The only eyewitness account of the eruption that we have comes from Pliny the Younger (the nephew of naturalist and naval commander Pliny the Elder), via letters that he wrote 17 years after the disaster, describing the eruption of Vesuvius. And it is from him that we get a timeline of what happened during those fateful days. There had been earth tremors in the days leading up to the eruption, but no one seems to have paid much attention to them. Vesuvius had last erupted in something like 1600 BC, so when it emitted a huge plume of ash and volcanic debris into the sky, no one had any idea what was happening. Over the next 18 hours or so, pumice stones rained down from the cloud, filling the streets and houses, and by the next morning, the huge column of ash had collapsed, and incredibly fast-moving clouds of stone and ash and gases (known as pyroclastic surges) started racing down the sides of Vesuvius at speeds of 200mph and temperatures of 300°C. Anyone who hadn’t left Pompeii by that point would have had no hope of survival, and it is this that finally buried and destroyed the city. View oEmbed on the source website The precise date of the eruption is harder to pin down and there is still much debate. What we have of Pliny’s original letters are various copies created by scribes in the medieval period. The best surviving copy gives the date of the eruption as 24 August, and this is the date that is most often used. But there are other copies that cite different dates: 24 October, 20 November and 3 December are among other dates given. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/08/GettyImages527432796-727a4b8-e1692114305171.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The bones of a Pompeiian, preserved under the volcanic debris. The skeletons of around 1,200 victims have been unearthed to date (Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)" title="The bones of a Pompeiian, preserved under the volcanic…

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Who was Cleopatra? Her life, her love affairs and her children, plus 6 little-known facts
type: item
date: 2023-05-10T06:05:00.000Z
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Roman rulers
description: Cleopatra is one of the best-known women in history, famed for her supposed beauty and intellect, and her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Explore her incredible life, her quest her for power and her untimely end
encoded: Cleopatra VII: a biography Born: c69 BC Died: 30 BC Reigned: She assumed control of Egypt in 51 BC after the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, intially co-ruling with her brother XIII. Her reign ended with her death in 30 BC. Known for: Being the last pharaoh of Egypt, being a fabled beauty, her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and – alongside Mark Antony – waging a war on Rome, which she ultimately lost. Outside Europe, in Africa and in Islamic tradition, she was remembered very differently. Arab writers refer to her as a scholar, and 400 years after her death a cult statue of Cleopatra was being honoured at Philae, a religious centre that also attracted pilgrims from further south, outside Egypt. Cause of death: Took her own life, possibly with poison. Legend has it that she encouraged a snake to bite her. Cleopatra VII: Ancient Egypt’s most famous daughter, and its last active Pharaoh. A woman immortalised in film, on canvas and in print. An enigmatic heroine to whom William Shakespeare devoted one of his greatest tragedies. Her story is one that has been retold throughout history – full of romance and love, riches and betrayal. But beneath the gold and glamour lies a far darker tale of sibling rivalry taken to the extreme, and a thirst for power that would change the course of history. Born c69 BC, Cleopatra was the third of a possible six children, all of whom shared a common father, Ptolemy XII. The Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian-Greek royal family that had ties to Alexander the Great, had ruled Egypt since 305 BC. Traditionally male rulers took the name Ptolemy, while Ptolemaic Queens were usually named Cleopatra, Arsinoë or Berenice. Great reputations Member exclusive | In our podcast series, expert historians discuss the contested reputations of key historical figures, charting the lives and afterlives of Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmeline Pankhurst and more… Listen to all episodes now How did Cleopatra become queen? For Cleopatra, lif…

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A brief history of International Women's Day: what is it and why do we celebrate it?
type: item
date: 2023-03-08T09:00:07.000Z
creator: Rachel Dinning
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Family and parenting
description: International Women’s Day has existed in various forms across the world for more than 100 years. Here's a brief guide to the history of the day, which takes place annually on 8 March
encoded: Everything you need to know ahead of International Women's Day 2023... What is International Women’s Day and when does it take place? Taking place on 8 March every year, International Women’s Day is a global celebration of women and their achievements. It is a day that seeks to raise awareness of issues affecting women around the world, highlighting initiatives and campaigns focused on improving women’s lives and increasing gender parity (equality between men and women). According to the official website, the main aims of International Women’s Day are to “celebrate achievements; raise awareness about women’s equality; lobby for accelerated gender parity and fundraise for female-focused charities”. Every International Women’s Day since 1996 has had a theme. The first International Women's Day theme was about “celebrating the past, planning the future”. For International Women's Day 2022, the theme is #BreakTheBias – the idea being to work towards a "gender equal world" that is "free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination". 20 inspirational quotes from women through history The official colours associated with International Women’s Day harken back to the women’s suffrage movement in Britain. They are: purple, which represents justice and dignity; green, which represents hope; and white, which symbolises purity (the latter being a somewhat controversial concept due to its associations with virginity). The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) used these colours in their campaigning in the UK in 1908. Activist Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954), editor of Votes for Women, a weekly newspaper, explained the choices as follows: “Purple, as everyone knows is the royal colour, it stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity… white stands for purity in private and public life… green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring.”] When did International Women’s Day start? International Women’s Day has e…

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14 surprising facts about the history of medicine
type: item
date: 2022-11-21T16:00:59.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Medieval life
description: How did people in the past treat illness, injury and disease? What medicines did they use? Here, Caroline Rance shares 14 facts from the long and often shocking history of medicine – from the first general anaesthetic to early caesareans and medicinal leeches…
encoded: How did people in the past treat illness, injury and disease? What medicines did they use? Here are 14 facts from medicine’s long and often shocking history – from the first general anaesthetic to early caesareans and medicinal leeches… Some of the earliest named doctors were women Saqqara is a huge archaeological site about 20 miles south of present-day Cairo. Five millennia ago it was the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, and remains home to one of the oldest surviving buildings in the world – the step pyramid of Djoser. A nearby tomb reveals the image of Merit Ptah, the first female doctor known by name. She lived in approximately 2,700 BC and hieroglyphs on the tomb describe her as ‘the Chief Physician’. That's pretty much all that's known about her career, but the inscription reveals that it was possible for women to hold high-status medical roles in Ancient Egypt. Some 200 years later another doctor, Peseshet, was immortalised on a monument in the tomb of her son, Akhet-Hetep (aka Akhethetep), a high priest. Peseshet held the title ‘overseer of female physicians’, suggesting that women doctors weren't just occasional one-offs. Peseshet herself was either one of them or a director responsible for their organisation and training. Although the barriers of time and interpretation make it difficult to reconstruct the day-to-day practice of Merit Ptah and Peseshet, female doctors appear to have been a respected part of ancient Egyptian society. Read more | 9 weird medieval medicines Cataract surgery was possible in the sixth century BC One of the oldest known medical textbooks is the Sushruta Samhita, written in Sanskrit in India. Its exact date is tentative, as no original version survives and it is only known from later copies, but the current consensus is that it was written in around 600 BC. Sushruta is thought to have been a physician and teacher working in the North Indian city of Benares (now Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh). His Sam…

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