HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-23T14:20:54.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: I’ve just been to Europe’s weirdest theme park – and came face to face with Josef Stalin
items: Toilets through time, from sponges on sticks to medieval privies
items: From maniacal horses to bat-men on the moon: 14 strange newspaper headlines from history
items: Medieval vampire slayers: why did our ancestors dig up and dismember the dead?
items: From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
items: Let a little magic into your life
items: Why do ‘wicked’ witches wear pointed hats? The real history explained
items: Tales of the toilet: a historical A–Z
items: Let’s think before we flush, with Dr Christopher Harding
items: Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs

I’ve just been to Europe’s weirdest theme park – and came face to face with Josef Stalin
type: item
date: 2026-03-01T15:30:45.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Communism
subject: Historical people
subject: Second World War battles
description: There aren’t many theme parks that place statues of Soviet leaders next to Snow White and her seven dwarfs, but you’ll find one in southern Lithuania. Keith Lowe takes us on a tour of one of Europe’s most bizarre – and controversial – tourist attractions
encoded: I am standing in a clearing in a Lithuanian forest, surrounded by guard towers and electrified fences. To all intents and purposes, it looks like I’m in a Soviet prison camp. Up above me a loudspeaker barks out orders in Russian. I hurry along a corridor of barbed wire. Up ahead, peeping ominously through the trees, I can see the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. But all is not as it seems. It doesn’t take long to realise that the loudspeaker is playing some sort of recording on a loop. The guards in the towers are not real either, but poorly disguised mannequins in theatre costume. And who are they guarding? Beneath them, in the barbed wire enclosure, is a row of Communist statues and half a dozen grazing llamas. Further along there are emus, cockatoos, a depressed-looking brown bear, and some statues of mass murderers. As for the gun, when I reach it, I discover that the only thing it is guarding is a children’s playground. Rifles and roundabouts, cockatoos and cattle-trucks, Lenin and llamas: welcome to Grūtas Park, Europe’s weirdest open-air museum. Its combination of terror and kitsch is so controversial that it almost got shut down. I first came here in 2018 as part of my research for a study of Second World War monuments. But I felt compelled to return, because I still can’t quite believe that this place actually exists. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1DSC1437-Lenin-Llamas-05-18c368a-e1772191107175.jpg" width="1506" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a white llama grazing on the grass alongside a tall stone marble statue of a bust of man. In the background is a lake, several trees and a brown llama laying on the ground" title="A llama grazes next to a bust of Vladimir Lenin at Grūtas Park, Lithuania. The unconventional visitor attraction, opened in 2001, is filled with relics of the former Soviet Union (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> A brutal past Grūtas Park has its roots in Lithuania’s very troubled history. Like s…

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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.

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From maniacal horses to bat-men on the moon: 14 strange newspaper headlines from history
type: item
date: 2026-02-01T15:30:24.000Z
creator: Hilary Mitchell
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
description: Muckraking journalists and money-hungry editors have been publishing sensational stories since newspapers first began. Hilary Mitchell flicks through the archives and reveals some of the weirdest press cuttings of all time
encoded: 1. "German ghouls: corpses converted to soap and explosives” Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, April 1917 If you think that ‘fake news’ is a new phenomenon, think again. One of the most notorious pieces of misinformation actually dates to the First World War. During the conflict, a gruesome rumour spread that German leaders were using “Kadaververwertungsanstalten” – ‘corpse factories’ – to turn the dead bodies of their own soldiers into products such as soap, candles, and even bombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/German-Ghouls-0741ad1-e1769765897344.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline GERMAN GHOULS across the top" title="German leaders were creating soap and explosives out of corpses, claimed this 1917 newspaper article. In reality, they were victims of a deliberately shocking propaganda campaign (Image by the Newspaper Archive)" /> The lurid story unsurprisingly sparked widespread outrage, but it wasn’t true. It was a purposefully shocking piece of war propaganda, and the German government protested in the strongest terms against the “loathsome and ridiculous” claims. However, that didn’t stop the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star gleefully reporting on the hoax in April 1917, in an article that claimed the Germans were making “dividends from death” by distilling glycerine from dead bodies “and so obtaining some portion of their explosives.” 2. "O Dammit wants his name changed" The Richmond Climax, 6 June 1913 Orlando Dammit was featured in the 6 June issue of the equally curiously named Richmond Climax newspaper. The short article explained that the man wanted to change his name from “O. Dammit” because he “can’t tell whether people are calling him or merely venting injured feelings when they say ‘O, dammit.’” It’s not clear what he wanted to change his name to, or if he was successful in his attempts to change it, but presumably he would have been happy with anything that didn’t begin wit…

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Medieval vampire slayers: why did our ancestors dig up and dismember the dead?
type: item
date: 2026-01-30T15:30:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Burial
subject: Death
subject: Medieval life
description: At the turn of the 12th century, two men from a Staffordshire village died suddenly. A few days after they were solemnly laid to rest, they were spotted walking around the village, with their coffins on their backs. John Blair investigates the medieval terror of the living dead
encoded: In the last decades of the 12th century, the townsfolk of Annan in the Scottish borders were terrified by a sinister nocturnal revenant that stalked the dark byways. “Each night his corpse, driven by Satan, left his grave and wandered through the streets” accompanied by howling dogs and spreading sickness and death, according to the contemporary chronicler William of Newburgh. Desperate to put an end to the unholy scourge, two brothers whose father had been carried off by the plague opened the grave and “exposed the corpse, which was distended to a huge corpulence, with a swollen, livid face. It was observed that the shroud, which had been wound around it, was completely shredded up. Too angry to be frightened, the young men struck a blow at the lifeless corpse, whereupon such a flow of blood gushed out that they understood it to be a sucker of many people’s blood. Dragging it out of the town, they quickly built a pyre.” Recalling the accepted wisdom that such a being would burn only after they’d cut out its heart, the brothers took their shovels and hacked out the organ – after which the cadaver was immolated. The curse was finally over. Walking corpses To modern ears, this story stretches credulity far beyond breaking point. Not so to William of Newburgh: he recorded another three such tales, and hinted at many more. There are “numerous modern cases and abundant reports”, he wrote, but “it would be just too laborious and burdensome to write down all episodes of this kind that I have heard to have happened in our own times”. Yet though walking corpses were boringly commonplace in the 1190s, they had almost vanished from the English scene only a few decades later. Apparently they retreated northwards, leaving only occasional traces south of the border with Scotland. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/W45702webready-05b1689-e1769699879666.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration shows two people standing over a cu…

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From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
type: item
date: 2026-01-02T15:30:11.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Sea monsters have haunted human imaginations for millennia. From the kraken to killer serpents, Prema Arasu explores what five mythical creatures reveal about our deepest fears
encoded: 1. Armed and dangerous The writhing tentacles of the kraken inspired horror and disgust Sea monsters have fired our imaginations – and chilled our blood – for as long as humanity has sailed the seas. The Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš, which dates back to at least 1200 BC, describes the creation of the world from two fearsome primordial beings: Apsû, the embodiment of subterranean fresh water, and Tiamat, the sea. Like the many mythical aquatic creatures that have occupied our dreams and our nightmares, Apsû and Tiamat reveal much about how the Babylonians saw the world, acting as projections through which their anxieties about nature could be expressed, examined and, perhaps, mastered. Fast forward more than a thousand years and, in Naturalis Historia (c77 AD), the earliest extant work of natural history, the Roman author Pliny the Elder argued that the largest animals found in the sea “exceed in size any of the terrestrial animals” because of the “superabundance of moisture with which they are supplied”. One such giant creature is the kraken, its origins lying in Nordic mythology and folklore. In his 1752–53 proto-scientific work The Natural History of Norway, Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan described the “Kraken, Kraxen, or, as some world name it, Krabben” as an island-sized creature, “round, flat, and full of arms, or branches”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was so energised by reports of this monster of the deep that, in 1830, he wrote a poem in its honour, describing an ancient, giant-armed creature slumbering “Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea.” British naturalist Henry Lee offered a more rational perspective. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), he stated that kraken sightings by sailors were most likely exaggerated reports of giant squid (Architeuthis dux), described a quarter of a century earlier by the Danish biologist Japetus Steenstrup. Even after that, though, kraken and other squid-like monsters proliferated in literature. Herma…

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Let a little magic into your life
type: item
date: 2025-12-23T13:29:41.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Professor Ronald Hutton suggests that we might benefit from seeking out a spot of magic in our modern disenchanted world
encoded: We live in a modern disenchanted world. That’s why, in this episode of our Life Lessons from History series, Ronald Hutton suggests that we might benefit from seeking out a spot of magic. Could we all do with a bit more of the thrill of the supernatural? Listen to this conversation to find out.

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Why do ‘wicked’ witches wear pointed hats? The real history explained
type: item
date: 2025-11-21T15:20:39.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: General History
subject: Period
subject: TV interest
subject: Witches
description: There have been many examples of pointed hats in history, but it remains unclear how any of them became a must-wear for the witches
encoded: We’re off to see… the Wicked Witch of the West, as she returns to the silver screen in Wicked: For Good, the second part of the fantasy epic based on the popular stage musical. But where would Elphaba be without her trademark look, including the iconic black, pointed and wide-brimmed hat? Along with a cat, broomstick and black robes, the pointed hat is a required feature of any depiction of the typical ‘evil witch’, and has been for centuries. How it became the headgear of choice, however, remains the subject of numerous theories – as there is no single hat to point the way to the archetypal witch. The myth of the alewives Before getting to the major theories, there is one that can be debunked. The internet is well-populated with the claim that the image of the witch began with alewives, medieval women who brewed ale in their homes and sold it locally. Dominating the brewing industry for a time, these women could achieve a degree of financial independence. In an era where any woman who baulked social norms was suspicious, this autonomy would have been enough to single them out, putting them at risk of being accused of witchcraft. In addition, the fact that they stood over bubbling cauldrons while brewing and wearing pointed hats to be easily spotted at markets, it is clear why some have argued that alewives were the inspiration for the image of the witch. Except, there is just zero historical evidence to back this up. The highly symbolic history of the pointed witch hat Instead, theories have taken in pointy hats from throughout history, some with highly symbolic meaning. The Phrygian cap of antiquity, for instance, came to represent liberty and freedom in the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century, while the ancient Romans presented freed slaves with a special pointed felt cap, called a pileus. In medieval Europe, the hennin came into fashion: an extremely tall cone with flowing material hanging out of the top. Yet while it certainly has a resemblance …

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Tales of the toilet: a historical A–Z
type: item
date: 2025-11-19T16:03:17.000Z
creator: Julian Humphrys
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: When was the first toilet invented? What did people use before the modern flush? What are the origins of the term 'crapper'? To mark World Toilet Day, Julian Humphrys explores the history of Britain's loos
encoded: A... is for Ajax Although Elizabethan writer and courtier John Harrington wasn’t the first person to design a flushing toilet – Londoner Thomas Brightfield had done so in 1449 – he was the first to provide a written specification for one. In 1596, he penned his Metamorphosis of Ajax (a pun on ‘jakes’, a slang word for a privy) in which he described a remarkably modern-sounding device that he’d installed in his house. This incorporated a pan with a seat and a cistern filled with water. When a handle was turned, the water washed the contents of the pan into a cesspool. Although Harrington installed one for Queen Elizabeth I in Richmond Palace, cost, problems of water supply, and lack of sewers meant that the idea wouldn’t catch on for centuries. B... is for Bazalgette By the 1850s, London’s growing population was producing unmanageable amounts of sewage. Cesspools leaked and overflowed, contaminating water supplies, and matters weren’t helped by the outpourings of the increasingly popular water closet. London’s Commission of Sewers had ordered that cesspools and house drains should be connected to sewers, but these fed directly into an increasingly noisome River Thames. Following the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858, when the smell from the river was so bad that MPs even considered abandoning Westminster, the Metropolitan Board of Works was tasked with overhauling London’s sewerage system. Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette (1819–91) was put in charge of operations. His 16-year project included embanking parts of the Thames, constructing 1,100 miles of street sewers, 82 miles of main interceptor sewers and building four monumental pumping stations, all designed to take the sewage eastwards to be discharged into the river away from heavily-populated areas. Watch | 10 minutes of toilets through time View Green Video on the source website C... is for Crapper In 1866, Yorkshire-born industrialist and plumber Thomas Crapper opened the world’s first bathroom showroom in Chelsea. For the…

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Let’s think before we flush, with Dr Christopher Harding
type: item
date: 2025-11-19T09:00:21.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: We can take lessons from Edo Japan about how we deal with our waste, Dr Christopher Harding tells Dr David Musgrove
encoded: There is a campsite at the foot of the South Downs which has tremendous toilets. In a corner of the field, you’ll find a gaggle of handsome timber cubicles, boasting rustic carpentry and impeccable cleanliness. Each cubicle has a raised box inside, with a hole in the middle framed by a comfortable wooden seat. Obviously that’s where you do your business. Then you throw in a handful or two of sawdust from a bucket to the side, and that’s the job done – no flushing involved (obviously you wash your hands, but there are taps outside for that). It’s a relaxingly rural experience that would encourage anyone to dwell on the merits of water-free composting toilets, for that is what they are. You can even educate yourself on what happens to the waste you and your fellow campers are producing because there is an informative handout explaining how it’s turned into a rich compost rather than being washed away to a sewage treatment works. It’s the sort of thing that the residents of Edo period Japan would have been at ease with. I spoke to Dr Christopher Harding, a scholar of Japanese history at the University of Edinburgh, and his Life Lesson from History is that we could learn a thing or two from the way that the Japanese historically dealt with their waste. Peace, prosperity and the problem of poo The Edo period runs from the early 1600s to the middle of the 19th century, an era of peace overseen by the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo, now Tokyo. With peace came prosperity, and Edo grew to be the largest city in the world at the start of the 18th century. That urban explosion also meant an explosion of excrement, which had to be attended to. You might imagine that the Edo solution was to build sewers and flush it away, particularly as the Japanese at the time were big innovators in municipal water management. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-640505355-2a09790.jpg" width="2654" height="2114" alt="A photograph showing a t…

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Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs
type: item
date: 2025-11-16T09:00:41.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: From infernal black dogs attacking churches to ravening, red-eyed brutes on remote roads, Britain has long been haunted by fearsome canine phantoms. Karen R Jones explores what these stories can tell us about societies past
encoded: On the morning of 4 August 1577, the good Christian folk of Bungay assembled in St Mary’s Church for their regular Sunday service. But more sinister forces were also gathering in the Suffolk town. Dark clouds massed above, then “there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest… not simply of raine but also of lightening and thunder”. This storm was only the prelude to a “straunge and terrible Wunder” described by Abraham Fleming in a pamphlet published soon after the event. For the church was plunged into darkness and a “black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse” burst in. It wrung the necks of two worshippers then “passing by an other man of the congregation… gave him such a gripe on the back, that therewith all he was presently drawen togither and shrunk up, as it were a peece of lether scorched in a hot fire”. The story of the Black Dog of Bungay is extraordinary, but far from unique in the region – East Anglia is the primary hunting ground of the spectral beast named Black Shuck – and, indeed, across the country. Britain is, famously, a nation of animal lovers, with 36 per cent of households having at least one dog. The UK canine consumer market is worth around £10bn a year, while millions of us tune in to watch dog-centric television programmes. These animals have become our trusted aides and loyal companions since domesticated dogs arrived on this island with the first human migrants during the Stone Age. It’s not surprising, then, that Britain’s population of paranormal pups is more diverse and widespread than anywhere else in the world, according to Mark Norman, a folklorist specialising in black dog apparitions. Such creatures reputedly stalk villages and lonely roads from Aberdeen to Penzance, and the British landscape echoes with their chilling howls. Hellhound is round the corner Dogs and humans have lived and travelled together in Britain since the Mesolithic age. Archaeological surveys place dogs at the UK’s oldest excavated house – at …

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