Social history

Is it true that an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their own prime minister in 1672? (Illustration by Glen McBeth)

Is it true that an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their own prime minister in 1672?

The Calcutta Cup, a rugby union trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Six Nations Championship match between England and Scotland.

Scotland v England: the world’s first international rugby match

A 15th-century detail from the Fountain of Youth, Piedmont, Italy. (Image by De Agostini/Getty Images)

Sexing up history: how to study and tell the history of sex

English countrywoman (right) with a lady of the court. From ‘Civitates Orbis Terrarum’, 1572. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Tudor women: what was life like?

Harriet Tubman. (Getty Images)

Harriet Tubman and the ‘Underground Railroad’

Woodcut of a woman who may be stoking a furnace or baking bread, printed in the 15th century. (SSPL/Getty Images)

What was life like for a medieval housewife?

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

First World War

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve

Pancake day celebrations

The history of Shrove Tuesday

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

Knife-crime fears: how have we responded through history?

The opening of the Great Exhibition by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851. (The Print Collector/Getty Images)

A big day in history: Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition at the famous Crystal Palace

An example of the Zimmermann Telegram

First World War

The Zimmermann telegram: the telegram that brought America into the First World War

St David painting in stained glass window, Ceredigion, UK. Exact date unknown. (Photo by David Angel/Alamy Stock Photo)

16 things you (probably) didn’t know about St David’s Day traditions

Gin Lane, a print issued in 1751 by painter and printmaker William Hogarth. It depicts the perceived evils of the consumption of gin. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The 18th-century craze for gin

‘Inkhorn’ was the term for an inkwell made out of a small horn and became a nickname for the new words being created by playwrights and poets, such as William Shakespeare. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

The evolution of the English language