Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

Thomas Blood stealing the Crown Jewels

The day Thomas Blood stole the Crown Jewels.

Child survivors at Auschwitz

Second World War

A brief history of Auschwitz

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944

The liberation of Auschwitz, 75 years on: what happened and how do we remember the Holocaust?.

"A great social experiment”: a brief guide to prohibition

Members of the Ku Klux Klan march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC in 1925. The Klan of this era was a terrorist group in the precise meaning of that term, says Linda Gordon. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

When the Ku Klux Klan was a mass movement

Hallie Rubenhold photographed in London. "In the 19th century, being both poor and a woman was a terrible combination. The cards were stacked against them," she says. (Photography by Fran Monks)

Hallie Rubenhold: “To most people, the women killed by the Ripper are just corpses. I want to tell a different story”.

Actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was personally invited by Oscar Wilde to play the title role in the upcoming London premiere of his play, 'Salomé'.

6 of London theatre’s most notable historical scandals.

Sketch of Guy Fawkes with a lantern kneeling in front of barrels of gunpowder

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot: everything you need to know

5 Georgian ghost hoaxes.

Illustration of pirate John Ward

Pirate John Ward: the real Captain Jack Sparrow

Billy Fullerton, gang chief of the Glasgow gang the Billy Boys

Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders?

War criminal? William the Conqueror shown on horseback in the Bayeux Tapestry. The king's Harrying of the North was a military success but a human catastrophe – one that even appalled chroniclers traditionally sympathetic to the Norman regime. (Photo by Bridgeman)

Was William the Conqueror a war criminal? The brutal story of the Harrying of the North

A cartoon from 1862 shows a pair 'garroters' attacking a victim. (Photo by The Cartoon Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Gangs and knife-crime fears: how has Britain responded through history?.

The murder of Thomas Becket

Q&A: What happened to the assassins who killed Thomas Becket?

An A-Z guide to the history of executions.

A real Peaky Blinder mug-shot

In pictures: what did the real Peaky Blinders look like?

A woman on a medieval ducking stool

Q&AQ&A: Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

An 18th-century public execution and crowd

Q&AWhen did people stop attending public executions in Britain?

19th-century mugshots

The real Peaky Blinders

Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico's left-wing president who in 1940 legalised drugs. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The year Mexico legalised drugs.

One of the earliest and most famous examples of extremism comes from ancient Rome. Starting in 264 BC and continuing for more than a century, Rome engaged in a series of wars with neighbouring Carthage. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of extremism – from ancient Rome to al Qaeda.

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark. The BBC television drama is putting Cornwall’s coastline at risk of "over-tourism” as visitors flock to the area to visit the show's scenic filming locations, tourism chiefs have warned. (Photo by BBC/Mammoth Screen/Mike Hogan)

Poldark, Peaky Blinders and 6 other historical TV shows that have tourists flocking to Britain

Charles I. (Photo by World History Archive/Alamy)

King killers in America.

Mary Fulbrook and Richard J Evans. (Photo by Fran Monks)

"Many of the Holocaust's perpetrators got away with it": why Nazi crimes went unpunished.

MK Ultra: the secrets of the CIA's mind-control programme.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most famous aviators, apparently disappeared without a trace during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

From Jack the Ripper to Amelia Earhart: 17 unsolved historical mysteries.

Funeral of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme

Who killed Olof Palme?

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.

How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James?.

Hallie Rubenhold. (Photo by Fran Monks)

The women killed by Jack the Ripper.