Social history

"With this ring..." A young couple say their vows in c1860, watched by bridesmaids and a clergyman – but much about Victorian weddings wasn't quite so familiar. (Photo by London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images)

The Library How to celebrate a Victorian wedding

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A Viking sword with silver and gold hilt, from Dyback, Skane. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

How England rode the Viking storm

c1916: British soldiers sitting around a lamp in their trench. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

First World War

10 First World War slang words we still use today

Britain’s first self-service supermarket, Sainsbury’s in Croydon, opened in 1950. (Sainsbury’s)

A brief history of shopping

In 1945 there were two million more ‘potential’ households than actual homes, in part exacerbated by the wartime damage to housing stock (Coventry, for example, lost one third of its homes in the Blitz). Here, displaced people in east London wait on the street. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A history of homelessness

A 'Thanksgiving Greetings' postcard. (Photo by K.J. Historical/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

A brief history of Thanksgiving

Wall painting from The House of the Faun, built during the 2nd century BC in the Roman city of Pompeii, depicting an erotic satyr and nymph. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

In bed with the Romans: a brief history of sex in Ancient Rome

A gamer plays the video game 'Red Dead Redemption II', an action-adventure and multi-platform western video game developed by Rockstar Studios released on October 26, 2018. (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire and Battlefield V: the real history behind 3 popular video games

A fresco from the Villa of the Vettii in Pompeii. Painted before the catastrophic eruption of Versuvius, these frescoes were uncovered from beneath layers of volcanic ash and pumice. (Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)

8 things you (probably) didn’t know about Pompeii

The First Thanksgiving in 1621, after a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme; screen print, 1932. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

7 things you might not know about the history of Thanksgiving

A portrait of Charles I.

Has history been unfair to Charles I?

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How to throw a medieval feast. An elaborate banquet depicted in a 14th-century illuminated manuscript of Froissart's Chronicles. (Getty Images)

How to throw a medieval feast

(Photo by Michele Falzone via Getty Images)

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about ancient Egypt

American athlete Jesse Owens (right) perhaps would never even have won one of his gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics if it wasn't for an act of kindness from a fellow athlete, German long-jumper Carl Ludwig 'Luz' Long. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

5 acts of kindness that changed history