HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-05-02T13:15:59.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Pageantry and politics: a history of British royal visits to the US
items: George Washington is an American hero – so why was he the pride of Victorian England?
items: Was the Boston Tea Party REALLY a peaceful protest?
items: Who fired "the shot heard round the world"?
items: What happened at the battles of Lexington and Concord?
items: Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
items: How did the US get so many guns?
items: Why was Benjamin Franklin rumoured to be a serial killer?
items: Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July?
items: Your guide to the 1776 American Declaration of Independence

Pageantry and politics: a history of British royal visits to the US
type: item
date: 2026-04-27T01:10:19.000Z
creator: Sam Edwards
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: British prime ministers
subject: British queens
subject: Historical people
subject: The royal family
subject: US presidents
description: As transatlantic tensions swirled about King Charles III’s visit to Washington DC in 2026, Sam Edwards reveals how past royal tours have steadied the ‘special relationship’ in times of crisis
encoded: The April 2026 royal visit to the United States came at a particularly challenging moment for the US-UK ‘special relationship’. In the preceding months, President Donald Trump had repeatedly singled out prime minister Keir Starmer for blunt criticism, even going so far as to declare that Starmer as “no Churchill”. Meanwhile, the royal family similarly found itself caught up in transatlantic controversy: the Epstein scandal. If all that wasn’t challenging enough, King Charles’s visit to America also came at a time when the US-UK relationship was drawing even more scrutiny than usual. 2026 is year is the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, which popularised the phrase ‘special relationship’, and it’s also the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The latter was of course the event that severed the connection between the American colonies and the British Crown and thereby put the transatlantic relationship onto a very different trajectory. In short, the visit came at a time of significant turbulence in the US-UK relationship. King Charles, however, might have been able to take some reassurance from the fact that several of his predecessors had similarly travelled to the United States during moments of challenge, change and upheaval... <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2GettyImages-1320405043big-566d798-e1777245347971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large group of men and women in formal 19th-century dress gather outside a red-brick tomb set within a leafy landscape, their attention focused on a central meeting of figures. Women wear layered gowns with bonnets, while men in dark suits and top hats stand in lines, with trees and a distant sky framing the scene." title="A painting by Thomas Pritchard Rossiter captures the Prince of Wales’s historic visit to George Washington’s tomb in 1860. The young prince, who later ruled as Edward VII, can be seen standing with President James B…

Royals-Across-the-Pond-Getty-Dreamstime-Mar-26-WL-AN-9dfd4fb.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

George Washington is an American hero – so why was he the pride of Victorian England?
type: item
date: 2025-12-21T16:00:01.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: US presidents
description: He may be a symbol of US independence, but George Washington’s family tree is firmly rooted on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Sam Edwards visits the English towns and villages that the president’s ancestors once called home
encoded: In 1886 a remarkable discovery in Lancashire, England, shed important new light on what one newspaper called the “vexed question of the ancestry of George Washington”. The discovery came during restoration work at St Oswald’s Church in Warton, a small village in the north of the county overlooked by a rocky crag and an Iron Age hill fort. As workmen chipped away at some of the old plaster on the church tower’s exterior, they were amazed to uncover “the coat of arms and name of the Washington family”. The news was received in Lancashire and beyond with delight. Indeed, despite his central role in leading the American Revolution, George Washington had long been a popular figure in Britain. He was often praised by the British press for his citizen virtue and skills as a military leader, and his death in December 1799 was mourned on both sides of the Atlantic. On learning of his passing, some of the ships of the Royal Navy’s fleet even lowered their flags to half-mast as a mark of respect. Little wonder that the discovery of Washington’s family crest at Warton was greeted with such enthusiasm. Here at last, after many years of detailed genealogical research, was something definitive, something literally carved in stone. The coat of arms at St Oswald’s provided clear proof that the Washington family tree had roots in the Lancashire loam. The timing could not have been more perfect. The relationship between the US and UK governments was just then becoming increasingly friendly – a development the historian Bradford Perkins later termed the ‘Great Rapprochement’. This was a good time, in short, to discover (and proclaim) Washington’s ‘Englishness’, particularly because his stock in the United States was riding especially high. Only a couple of years earlier, a huge obelisk in his memory had been dedicated in the nation’s capital, which still dominates the city skyline even now. British enthusiasm for Washington persisted over the subsequent decades. In the early 20th centu…

George-washington-english-rootss-AN-e6c45fc.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

Was the Boston Tea Party REALLY a peaceful protest?
type: item
date: 2025-12-16T13:29:37.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans explores the true story behind the infamous destruction of tea in Boston Harbour in December 1773 – a radical act of defiance that helped ignite the American Revolution
encoded: With more than £1 million worth of tea (in today’s money) dumped into the water, this was no minor protest. Was it just about taxes? Or was it a violent rejection of British imperial power, corporate monopoly, and political control? HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans explores the true story behind the infamous destruction of tea in Boston Harbour in December 1773 – a radical act of defiance that helped ignite the American Revolution. Featuring expert insights from: Professor Benjamin Carp, Daniel M. Lyons Chair in American History at Brooklyn College, and author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (Yale, 2010) Professor Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London Professor Sarah Purcell, L.F. Parker Professor of History, and author of Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) We unpack the real events of 16 December 1773 – from the role of Indigenous disguises to the targeting of the East India Company – and explore how this single night in Boston sparked a political firestorm that would change the world. Explore the full five-part podcast series on the story of the Boston Tea Party, featuring all the speakers in this video. View Green Video on the source website

YT-Thumb-Boston-Tea-Party4-436c611-e1765891742339.jpg
width: 1500
height: 996

Who fired "the shot heard round the world"?
type: item
date: 2025-04-18T13:39:44.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: It’s 250 years since British troops clashed with American colonists at Lexington and Concord. George Goodwin reveals how one fateful day triggered the American Revolutionary War – and sparked a ferocious race to blame the other side
encoded: At 5am on 19 April 1775, two groups of British subjects faced each other across the town common of Lexington, 11 miles north-west of Boston, Massachusetts. One group was composed of local inhabitants, militiamen who would fight as Patriots. The other was of red-coated British troops under the immediate command of Marine Major John Pitcairn. The militiamen were certainly not there by chance: the plans of General Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, had been revealed to his opponents. Simmering tensions over London’s repeated assertions of control over its American colonies, dating back to the 1760s, had brought the two sides to this point. After a tense standoff, the Redcoats and militiamen traded fire. At the end of this brief but fateful exchange, eight Patriots lay dead. A bloody retreat Major Pitcairn and his men were just the vanguard of a 1,500-strong force under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith. The colonel had a clear mission that day: to seize Patriot-held cannon and munitions in nearby Concord, the main town in Middlesex County and the centre for mobilising the county militia regiments of 6,000 men. And so, shortly after the clash at Lexington, Smith’s Redcoats pushed on to Concord. Hostilities were resumed at Concord’s North Bridge at around 9am, shortly after the British had undertaken a largely fruitless search for weaponry to the west of the town. The intensity of the engagement now increased: colonist numbers had grown to around 400, with the local men now joined from surrounding areas by militia that included the elite Minutemen, whose name reflected their timely readiness for action. After both sides temporarily disengaged, Smith’s force reassembled in Concord itself and, at noon, continued along the road back to Boston. The retreat would last until after 7pm, with the regulars harried in a series of defensive engagements with an ever-increasing and finally vastly greater number of colonists. Among the Patriots were the…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/gr0060955Hbig-ae54428-e1744914528128.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

What happened at the battles of Lexington and Concord?
type: item
date: 2025-04-17T17:00:03.000Z
creator: Julian Humphrys
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Trends-Anniversary
description: When British troops went to seize arms stockpiled by American colonists at Concord, Massachusetts, they could have had little idea of their raid’s revolutionary ramifications. Julian Humphrys explains all…
encoded: Under cover of darkness, in the early hours of 19 April 1775, a force of British soldiers was on the move. General Thomas Gage, the British Commander in Boston, Massachusetts, had learned the American colonists were stockpiling weapons and ammunition at Concord, about 18 miles away. To nip any potential resistance in the bud, he ordered a surprise raid to seize the lot. What happened next at Lexington and Concord lit the spark of the American Revolution, and the events have been immortalised as "the shot heard round the world", a phrase coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 poem Concord Hymn. Find out below what happened during the battles, and the importance of the events of 19 April in the long conflict to come… What tensions led to the battles at Lexington and Concord? In 1775, Britain’s 13 American colonies ran along the east coast from Massachusetts in the north to Georgia in the south. Each was administered by a royal governor, his council and an elected colonial assembly. After defeating the French in North America in the early 1760s, in part during the Seven Years' War, Britain wanted to increase taxes in America and make the colonies pay for their own defence. Using the slogan ‘No taxation without representation’, the colonists argued that only their own assemblies, and not the British parliament, had a right to levy taxes. Tensions rose. December 1773 saw the colonists dump a cargo of British tea into the harbour, in protest of Britain’s attempt to tax imports – the Boston Tea Party. The government responded by closing the port of Boston, dissolving the colonial assembly and placing Massachusetts under military rule. Believing both their liberty and economic prosperity to be under threat, the colonists took action. They set up their own continental assembly, took over their local militias and started stockpiling military supplies. Lexington and Concord: quick facts Who fought? British regulars: 1,500, American colonial militia: 3,500 When? 19 April 1775, th…

GettyImages-51862212-f0012a7-e1744909295793.jpg
width: 620
height: 418

Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T10:59:20.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: Seven historians put forward their nominations for the most accomplished leader to have sat in the White House
encoded: George Washington In office: 1789–97 Party affiliation: none Nominated by: Thomas Kidd, historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale, 2022) George Washington was the first president in US history – and I’m nominating him as the best, too. I am basing this on his success as a leader, his ability to negotiate conflict in his administration, and most importantly the example he set for future presidents. Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War were enamoured with the ideal of the virtuous republican leader, in the model of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus. Washington was no perfect man, of course, and like many elite southern Americans he was a slaveholder. But in politics he came the closest to manifesting the republican ideal of any American president. Washington became president after serving as the commander of the Continental Army during the fight for independence from the British. His leadership of the army was not uniformly positive, but his tenacity ultimately led to a successful outcome. Many suspected he might simply remain in the position as a kind of benevolent autocrat, but he resigned from the army in late 1783, returning to his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. Befitting the respect that he commanded, Washington was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the US Constitution was drafted. Then he became the first president to be elected under that Constitution in 1789, in a unanimous vote of the electoral college. Washington dealt with major political conflicts in his administration, especially between the treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who bitterly disagreed over economic policy and the direction of the new republic. Washington was largely (if not completely) able to rise above the partisan bickering, and always believed that the republic and its leaders needed to manifest consensus for the public good. He assiduously reached out to m…

Screenshot-2025-01-23-at-10.58.14-9a89b24.png
width: 2318
height: 1528

How did the US get so many guns?
type: item
date: 2024-09-30T06:00:28.000Z
creator: Matt Elton
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
description: Andrew C McKevitt charts the forces behind the postwar weaponry boom which has seen US civilian gun ownership skyrocket
encoded: Today there are an estimated 450 million guns in civilian hands in the United States – ten times the number than at the end of the Second World War. But how did that conflict spark a weaponry boom? And what are the social and economic currents that have led the US to have more guns than people? Matt Elton speaks to Andrew C McKevitt, whose Cundill History Prize-shortlisted book Gun Country explores these questions. Andrew C McKevitt is the author of Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023). Buy it now from Amazon Find out more about the Cundill History Prize here

Pod-Cundill-Andrew-McKevittWL-a875206.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

Why was Benjamin Franklin rumoured to be a serial killer?
type: item
date: 2024-07-31T09:33:59.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Death
description: A grisly discovery in the garden of an old Georgian townhouse in central London ignited tabloid speculation that its most famous resident had been a mass murderer
encoded: The short and emphatic answer is: no, Benjamin Franklin was not a serial killer. However, in 1998, a gruesome discovery of human bones was made on the grounds of a house in central London. The building at 36 Craven Street, a short walk from present-day Charing Cross station, was once home to the revered Founding Father. Inevitably, scurrilous rumours soon ran rife that Franklin himself was responsible. What exactly was discovered at Benjamin Franklin's former home? Following decades of neglect, the property at Craven Street underwent conservation in the late 1990s. But work came to a halt when a series of human and animal bones were unearthed at the back of the site. This area had originally been a garden some two centuries earlier. About 1,200 bones from an estimated 15 individuals were eventually recovered from a small pit. A coroner determined the bones were more than 100 years old, negating the need for a criminal inquest. Subsequent scientific analysis determined them to be over 200 years old. Why were there bones at 36 Craven Street? One crucial find among the pile of bones was the discovery of a turtle’s spine and traces of mercury. This gave a tangible link to William Hewson, one of the most capable anatomists of the late 18th century. In 1770, he had demonstrated the flow of mercury through a turtle to the Royal Society in London. Hewson was the son-in-law of Margaret Stevenson, the owner of 36 Craven Street and Benjamin Franklin’s landlady. Throughout this time, Hewson used Craven Street as an anatomy school, discarding the remnants of his experiments in the garden. Georgian London was an unsanitary and dangerous city with a high mortality rate. Although the bodies of convicts executed for murder were earmarked for dissection, the capital hosted a thriving illegal trade in cadavers, courtesy of so-called ‘resurrectionists’, also known as ‘body snatchers’. Read more | 10 dangers of Georgian London In May 1774, Hewson contracted septicaemia during a dissecti…

GettyImages-530193809-71925a0-e1722342437478.jpg
width: 620
height: 414

Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July?
type: item
date: 2024-07-03T13:05:00.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: The Fourth of July is one of America’s biggest holidays, with today’s celebrations including fireworks and parades across the USA. But what exactly is Independence Day and what does it celebrate? Dr Tom Cutterham explains why Americans celebrate on the Fourth of July…
encoded: In July 1776, during the second year of the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), representatives from 13 North American colonies of the kingdom of Great Britain voted to declare themselves independent from the crown, forming the United States of America. Two days after the historic vote, on 4 July 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed – and each year since, Americans have celebrated. Though the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775, the colonies did not initially demand complete separation from British rule; instead they sought more autonomy within the British empire. However, British treatment of the American colonists as clear rebels and enemies over the opening months of the conflict leant weight to arguments for independence and, on 2 July 1776, in Philadelphia’s State House, representatives from 13 of Britain’s colonies in North America voted, at last, to publicly break their bonds with the mother country and its king, George III. Read more | Did George III read the Declaration of Independence? But 2 July is not the day that Americans celebrate every year. They chose instead 4 July, two days later, when Congressmen signed the finished version of the Declaration of Independence – a document that would announce their decision to the world. Drafted mostly by Thomas Jefferson, a prominent lawyer and planter from Virginia (and later the third president of the United States between 1801–09), the Declaration of Independence features the famous lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable rights” – among them “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The declaration also describes Native Americans as “merciless savages”and blames King George for inciting American slaves to insurrection. More than 240 years later, Americans still celebrate the day their rebel leaders put their signatures to Jefferson’s words. Here are five things you might not know about the history of Independen…

GettyImages-517212810-bb53531-e1719830038112.jpg
width: 620
height: 412

Your guide to the 1776 American Declaration of Independence
type: item
date: 2024-07-01T10:06:00.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
description: The ground-breaking document that laid the foundations for the modern-day United States promised freedom from the yoke of English tyranny, but not equal rights for all…
encoded: What is the Declaration of Independence? Approved by Congress on 4 July 1776, the Declaration of American Independence stated that America’s 13 colonies were to be “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”. Signed by delegates from all 13 American colonies – Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Bay Colony (including Maine), New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations – it became one of the founding documents of the US government, alongside the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Read more | Your guide to the American War of Independence What events led to its creation? For 12 years leading up to the Declaration’s approval, America had been resisting attempts by Britain to impose heavy taxes on the colonies to pay for expensive wars against France. The colonies saw these taxes as unjust, and initially peaceful protests broke into rebellion with the destruction of a shipment of tea in Boston – an event popularly known as the Boston Tea Party – in response to the unpopular Tea Act of May 1773. The British parliament imposed a number of acts that effectively ended self-government and other historic rights in Massachusetts, and closed the port of Boston. American patriots set up a shadow government, and 12 colonies joined them, forming a Continental Congress. In April 1775, hostilities broke out into armed conflict, the movement for independence gathered momentum, and the Declaration was adopted in July 1776. Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story. Listen to all episodes now Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? On 7 Ju…

John-AdamsGettyImages-513681337-ac501d0-e1775120307259.jpg
width: 1495
height: 1000