HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-02-20T09:04:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Toilets through time, from sponges on sticks to medieval privies
items: The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
items: The overlooked history of Muslims in Europe
items: How did people understand pregnancy BEFORE modern medicine?
items: Health and medicine | Alice Loxton on the world of the Georgians
items: Paint a pot like an ancient Etruscan
items: Don’t worry, be Babylonian
items: Get personal with your poo, like a samurai
items: Aids: the epidemic that changed Britain
items: What was the Habsburg jaw?

Toilets through time, from sponges on sticks to medieval privies
type: item
date: 2026-02-20T09:03:23.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
description: What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet? How did Romans really use a sponge on a stick? HistoryExtra's David Musgrove explains all
encoded: In this whistle-stop tour of how our ancestors have used the loo, HistoryExtra’s David Musgrove heads to the National Trust's Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire, to see what we can learn from the most universal of all experiences. With expertise from historians Hannah Platts, James Wright, Tracy Borman and Jerry White, he explores the ins and outs of how toilets have worked through time – from innovations in carrying away our waste to a remarkable ancient edict that demanded flatulence. View Green Video on the source website Find out more about the history of toilets in our podcast mini-series, when Musgrove revisits long-past lavatories in the company of leading historical experts to uncover what we can learn about our ancestors and their eras – from the sociable long-drops of Roman Britain and draughty medieval garderobes to the cesspits of the Victorian slums.

Toilets-YT-Thumbnails-AN-9778a33.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
type: item
date: 2026-02-19T11:28:09.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: With conflicting advice and endless new trends, it can feel hard to keep up with the modern health and wellness space. But ideas about how to live a healthy life are nothing new. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks had their own list of requirements
encoded: Wellness might feel like a modern concept, attached to health-tracker apps, screen time, and green smoothies. But the concept of actively trying to lead a healthy life while keeping the body in a good state isn’t new. In fact, systems of preventative health stretch back more than 2,000 years to the medical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world. Speaking on the Life Lessons from History series from the HistoryExtra podcast, Sasha Handley, a professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester, says there used to be a “fantastic preventative healthcare culture” based on advice that dates back to ancient Greece. As she sets out, there was a list of six lifestyle factors and behaviours that physicians, medical practitioners, and ordinary people alike knew they had to take care of for their long-term health. These were the ‘six non-naturals’ and the ancient Greeks believed that “temperance of all of those six things was key to long-term good health, according to the wisdom of the time” says Handley. The term “non-naturals” described factors external to the body that could be managed or regulated, as opposed to “naturals,” which were the body’s innate characteristics So what were these six factors, and how much do they align with modern thinking? Fresh air The first non-natural to look after was fresh air – that is, “getting enough of it and making sure that you were not taking in fetid or corrupt air,” Handley says. The Greeks thought that ‘bad air’ could cause disease and advocated for good airflow within houses to lessen exposure to stagnant air. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide Today, we know there is no singular concept of ‘bad air’. But there are pollutants in the air that can be hazardous to people, and we do know that some diseases are airborne. Food and drink It was considered important that a person was “eating and drinking the right kinds of things for [their] bodily constitution, but also …

Ancient-Greek-Health-WL-AN-99b3fad.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

The overlooked history of Muslims in Europe
type: item
date: 2026-02-11T15:20:48.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Islam
description: Tharik Hussain speaks to Danny Bird about the long but often overlooked and distorted history of Muslims in Europe – and the enduring resistance to its reappraisal
encoded: Danny Bird: You open your book by recounting a chance visit to an old mosque in Cyprus. What was so significant about that moment? Tharik Hussain: Nothing changed for me on the day itself, because I knew very little about Islam’s history in Europe at that time. On a long, cheap layover in Larnaca – a place I’d never heard of – I was simply looking for a way to pass the time with a toddler in tow. I’d found a brief reference to a nearby mosque, and decided to visit. At the time (2003), I was preparing to make hijrah – to leave Britain, because I felt that I no longer belonged. My education had led me to believe that there was no meaningful Muslim history in Europe. So when we arrived at this neglected Ottoman-era mosque at the Hala Sultan Tekke, I had no framework for understanding it. The elderly guide didn’t speak English, and neither of us knew what we were looking at. What unsettled me was a tomb inside the mosque, which clashed with the theological outlook my wife and I held at the time. We left, dismissing the place, though the guide handed us a small booklet as we went. Two years later, while working as an English language teacher in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I rediscovered the booklet. To my shock, it claimed that the tomb belonged to a relative of the Prophet Muhammad – his maternal aunt, Umm Harâm. That completely overturned my belief that Europe had no real Islamic history, let alone connections reaching back to the Prophet’s own family. When did Islam first come to Europe? If we look at the very beginnings of Muslim presence in Europe, it’s striking how quickly it arrived. Within 20 years of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in AD 632, Muslims were present in places such as Cyprus and, later, Sicily, establishing themselves far more quickly than Christian or Jewish communities had done in the continent. Some of these early arrivals, including members of the Prophet’s family, were then buried in Europe, their tombs becoming sites of ziyara (pilgrimage), holding gre…

Tharik-Hussain-14webready-b93b76c-e1770822628745.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

How did people understand pregnancy BEFORE modern medicine?
type: item
date: 2026-02-06T10:17:32.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne took a brief look back at the wonderfully strange, surprisingly clever and occasionally downright bizarre history of pregnancy
encoded: What did people in the past do to not only diagnose pregnancy, but to ensure the health of mothers and babies in the nine months before birth? To find out, HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne took a brief look back at the wonderfully strange, surprisingly clever and occasionally downright bizarre history of pregnancy – it's a far from comprehensive but fascinating snapshot into this subject. View Green Video on the source website

YT-Thumb-Pregnancy-WL-AN-051716c.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

Health and medicine | Alice Loxton on the world of the Georgians
type: item
date: 2026-02-02T09:04:12.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: The world of the Georgians
description: In episode four of the World of the Georgians, Alice Loxton investigates Georgian healthcare, where cutting-edge science sat uneasily alongside quack cures and medical scams
encoded: Medicine in Georgian Britain was as ripe for ridicule as it was for reform. In this episode, Alice Loxton explores how satirical artists such as James Gillray mocked the confusion of 18th-century healthcare, where miracle cures, medical quacks and genuine scientific breakthroughs existed side by side. From dubious treatments to the controversy surrounding early vaccination, this episode reveals how caricature captured public anxieties about illness, science and the body. View Green Video on the source website Want more from Alice? Find more episodes of the World of the Georgians. Alice Loxton is a historian, presenter and Sunday Times bestselling author with over three million followers on social media.

YT-Alice-Loxton-ep4-WL-AN-0f8989c.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

Paint a pot like an ancient Etruscan
type: item
date: 2025-12-23T13:47:35.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Dr Lucy Shipley shares a life lesson that we can take from the approach to life of the ancient Etruscans
encoded: Be yourself and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That’s one of the lessons that archaeologist Dr Lucy Shipley says we can take from the approach to life of the ancient Etruscans. These historical inhabitants of the Italian peninsula seem to have had a very self-confident attitude – one which we could learn from today.

Etruscans-Lucy-Shipley-Kate-Hazell-rough-AW-a60b929.jpg
width: 2126
height: 1417

Don’t worry, be Babylonian
type: item
date: 2025-12-23T13:41:55.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: If you find yourself in a state of worry, Selena Wisnom argues that you could take a leaf out of the book of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians
encoded: Do you wake up in the middle of the night worrying? If so, you’re definitely not alone. But if you want to manage the anxieties of modern life, Selena Wisnom argues that you could take a leaf out of the book of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.

Assyrians-Worrying-Kate-Hazell-rectangle-4dec18e.jpg
width: 2126
height: 1417

Get personal with your poo, like a samurai
type: item
date: 2025-12-23T13:35:42.000Z
creator: Dr Christopher Harding
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Chris Harding’s Life Lesson from History is that we should think more carefully about how we deal with our waste products
encoded: Are we too quick to flush? In Edo Japan, people were much more mindful of how they dealt with sewage and rubbish than we are today. Chris Harding’s Life Lesson from History is that we should think more carefully about how we deal with our waste products, in the spirit of the samurai.

Chris-Harding-Samurai-night-soil-Kate-Hazell-e6a4d36.jpg
width: 2126
height: 1417

Aids: the epidemic that changed Britain
type: item
date: 2025-12-05T13:47:11.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Forty years ago, the UK found itself in the grip of a virus that killed thousands of people and sparked fear, confusion and prejudice – HIV. Janet Weston explores the Aids crisis as it unfolded throughout the 1980s, and how it transformed attitudes about everything from sexuality to healthcare
encoded: In the early 1980s, reports of a strange new disease began emerging from the United States. It was picked up in the British gay press – Gay News ran a story in November 1981 under the headline “Gay cancer or mass media scare?” – but relatively few people noticed. Even among those who did, confusion and doubt reigned: weren’t these tales of a “gay cancer” just fear-mongering, a backlash against the gains of the fight for gay liberation in the 1970s? How could a disease target gay men, anyway? Such suspicions were not without good reason. The medical profession had a difficult history with people who didn’t conform to heterosexual norms: less than 10 years earlier, homosexuality had still been categorised by the internationally influential American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder. And when it came to Aids, the lack of knowledge about its cause or mode of transmission led to wild speculation. One theory linked Aids to the use of “poppers”, a recreational drug popular on the gay scene; another proposed that Aids was the end point of too many sexually transmitted infections. The picture grew still more complex as the symptoms associated with this new illness were also identified both among injecting drug users and people with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia, including women and children. By July 1983, there had been 14 reported cases of Aids in Britain, all among men. Most were gay, including one man who also injected drugs, but the group included another who had been receiving treatment for haemophilia in the form of blood products. Just two months later, the number had risen to 24, and included a woman and a second man with haemophilia. As numbers of diagnoses in the United Kingdom started to rise sharply, the deaths began. Many people died very soon after diagnosis, as an array of opportunistic infections took advantage of their weakened immune systems. Terrence Higgins died in July 1982, one of the first deaths in the UK attributed to Aids. His p…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/09/shutterstockeditorial130824acmyk-2534e11-e1764943016195.jpg
width: 1512
height: 1000

What was the Habsburg jaw?
type: item
date: 2025-11-26T10:13:30.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
description: One family was an ever-present force in European affairs from the Middle Ages to the modern era, but, as Jonny Wilkes explores, the Habsburgs’ desperate bid to keep power within the family gave them a distinctive physical callsign, as well as dynastic longevity…
encoded: For centuries, the Habsburgs were one of the most prominent royal dynasties in Europe. They ruled as kings of Germany, from the 13th century, and as archdukes of Austria from the mid-14th century. They sat on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire from the 15th to 19th centuries. Their house dominated swathes of the continent with Habsburg rulers in a host of countries, most notably Spain. But there was something else that became prominent about the Habsburgs: their jawline. What was the Habsburg jaw? Many members of the dynasty had the same physical trait of a protruding bottom jaw – a mandibular prognathism, medically speaking. The jutting chin could be so pronounced that the flattering portrait artists of the day could not manage to hide them. The condition even prevented some members of the dynasty from eating or speaking properly. Read more | The Habsburgs: the dynasty that wouldn’t die The ‘Habsburg jaw’ was a biological result from generations of inbreeding. In a bid to keep their power, the Habsburgs kept everything within the family. They relied on ‘consanguine’ marriages that partnered close relatives, such as first cousins, or uncles with their nieces. View Green Video on the source website Why did the Habsburgs intermarry so much? It’s true that close-family marriages weren’t exactly unusual among the royal houses of Europe, but the Habsburgs were the champions of consanguinity. Of the 11 marriages during the reign of the Spanish Habsburgs, from 1516 to 1700, only two were not incestuous. “The arrangement made good political sense, guaranteeing that the two lines would support each other militarily,” writes historian Martyn Rady, “which paid dividends in the Thirty Years’ War (the bloody religious conflict fought across central Europe from 1618–48). “Biologically, however, it was a disaster. As first and second-cousin and uncle-niece marriages became the norm, madness and deformity followed.” In 1517, Italian diplomat Antonio di Beatis described the future …

Habsburg-Chin-Getty-Images-caf45b9.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000