Social history

'The Last Supper', 1803. A copy of the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1490s. Some think the superstition about Friday 13th being unlucky is related to the Last Supper, when 13 people were present at the meal before Jesus's crucifixion on Good Friday. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Q&A Why is Friday 13th considered unlucky?

c1955: A child pulls toilet paper from a roll. But what did humans do before toilet paper was invented? (Photo by Mac Gramlich/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

General ancient history

When was toilet paper invented and what did people use before?

German women carrying children believed to be part of the Lebensborn programme

Second World War

The woman who gave birth for Hitler

Making a splash: Diana relishes taking her sons on a water ride at the Thorpe Park theme park in 1993. William has since recalled how his mother loved

Princess Diana: a “modern” mother who ripped up the rule book

Writer and journalist Hadley Freeman

Hadley Freeman on a 20th-century family history

Anne Frank - Getty Images

Second World War

12 things you need to know about Anne Frank and her diary

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179). (Photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Doctors, playwrights and feminists: meet 6 trailblazing medieval women

Wartime evacuees wash their hands

“The very sight of her hands did almost turn my stomach”: a brief history of hand-washing

100 women who changed the world

Women’s history month: 11 podcasts to listen to

Women 'take the air' in an attempt to ward off the Spanish Flu

First World War

“Far too little, too late”: what happened when Spanish Flu hit Britain a century ago?

Who is the greatest leader in world history?

Who is the greatest leader in world history?

Did medieval people take baths? This 15th-century illustration would suggest so – and shows a man climbing out of a tub. Medieval doctors prescribed bathing as a cure for conditions ranging from bladder stones to melancholy. (Photo by Bridgeman)

The (not so) stinky Middle Ages: why medieval people were cleaner than we think

On his plantation in Georgia, American politician Benjamin Hawkins is teaching Creek Native Americans how to use a plow, 1805. (Photo by Granger, NYC / TopFoto)

Food and war

Illustration by Owen Davey

A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past?

Four women dressed in the perceived fashion of the roaring twenties in a 1954 musical called ‘The Boy Friend’. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the ‘Roaring Twenties’ myth obscures the making of modern Britain