Chaucer’s meadows are romantic landscapes of leisurely frolicking. But for medieval haymakers July meant a month of hard ...

Bede wrote that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded Britain en masse in the fifth century. Does the evidence agree?

On 1 July 1903 a publicity stunt for a sporting paper cycled into history as the first Tour de France. Cycle racing was all the rage. The Paris-Brest-Paris race was launched in 1891. (Its inaugural ...

The treaty to bring parts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico into the United States was signed on December 30th, 1853. It was the Gadsden Purchase that settled the main boundaries of the United ...

In the early months of 1956 Marilyn Monroe was preparing to star in Bus Stop, discussing with Laurence Olivier a role in The Prince and the Showgirl and romancing Arthur Miller, who was divorcing his ...

Robert Peel was 62 when he died. He had sat in the Commons for more than 40 years and had held high office many times. As Home Secretary in 1829 he had created the ‘Peelers’ or ‘Bobbies’, the ...

The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, later to be known as Kellogg's, was founded on February 19th, 1906. John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith Kellogg were brothers from a Seventh-day Adventist ...

In 1811 skilled textile workers in Britain attacked factories and factory owners to defend their livelihoods. By the time the Luddite cause hit Yorkshire in 1812, it had become a genuine mass movement ...

In April 1971 a series of table tennis matches between the US national team and the world champions China made history. Then ranked 23rd in the world, the US team was comprised of amateur players, ...

The organisers of the Indian displays at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 had a problem: they urgently required a taxidermy elephant. They needed the elephant as a frame on which to display a lavish ...