Science and technology

Peter Mayhew, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill, on-set of the film Star Wars

Star Wars: why did the film make history?

Da Vinci's sketch 'The Vitruvian Man'. Da Vinci's talents ranged from anatomy to military engineering, and many of his innovations were not explored further for several centuries. (Photo by: Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

The Library Leonardo da Vinci’s genius: 7 of his visions for the future

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Ye final frontier: the 17th-century space race

A portrait of physicist Albert Einstein, c1946. (Photo by Fred Stein Archive/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Albert Einstein: facts about his life, death, education and work

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Darwin vs God: did the ‘Origin of Species’ cause a clash between church and science?

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Second World War

The Library Alan Turing: The man, the enigma

Codebreakers work in Hut 3 at Bletchley Park during the Second World War

Second World War

Alan Turing was not the only star of Bletchley Park

c60 AD, Queen Boadicea of the Iceni holding a spear. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

8 things you may not know about British history

Alfred Nobel. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Great misconceptions: There is a Nobel Prize for economics

Ada Lovelace “had a unique and farsighted insight into the potential of computers,” says James Essinger. (Photo by Getty Images)

Ada Lovelace: a visionary of computing

A group of skaters on a frozen-over backwater of the River Thames at Abingdon, 1895. (Photo by English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Harbingers of doom: a brief history of climate change warnings

c1935: Beatrice Shilling sits astride her Norton motorcycle. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

5 “bloody brilliant” 20th-century women

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First World War

Marie Curie (1867–1934): her life, achievements and legacy

The miller Samuel Wood, whose arm and scapula were torn off when entangled in a rope attached to a moving mill machinery in 1737. (Photo by Alamy)

7 bizarre cases in the history of medicine