When Old Norse explorers reached North America, they made history. But their brief, violent encounter with its indigenous peoples shows how cultural collisions could end in chaos. Historian and Viking ...

A landmark US law passed more than 50 years ago helped build the world’s most successful national women’s football team. Historian Jean Williams explains how Title IX changed the game, and why the ...

In 1967, a mysterious book appeared on American shelves. It seemed to confirm the darkest suspicions of a country gripped by Cold War paranoia, grappling with increasingly controversial entanglement ...

Lauren Good is the digital content producer at HistoryExtra. She joined the team in 2022 after completing an MA in Creative Writing, and she holds a first-class degree in English and Classical Studies ...

Few Roman emperors are as synonymous with scandal as Nero. From stories of arson and artistic vanity to theatrical cruelty and imperial excess, his name has long conjured images of a decadent tyrant – ...

During the Second World War, thousands of Allied pilots were deployed on a mission so dangerous, and so overshadowed by the rest of the conflict, that many referred to themselves grimly by the acronym ...

In 14th-century England, the prevailing experience wasn’t of medieval splendour, of chivalric knights, illuminated manuscripts and mighty monarchs. From the early 1300s to the century’s close, England ...

Perceptions of ancient Mesopotamia – the birthplace of the world’s first civilisations, which emerged more than 4,000 years ago across what is now Iraq – are dominated by stories of divine kings, ...

Responsible for daring assignments like Operation Postmaster, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was given a mission to undermine enemies of the Allies in Nazi-occupied territory and “set Europe ...

James Bond, with his shaken martinis and exotic escapes, is widely recognised as fiction’s most enduring spy. But his creator, Ian Fleming, didn’t conjure up Bond’s outlandish adventures from thin air ...

Two swords from the Roman empire have been found in a field in the English county of Gloucestershire, and their excavation has led to the discovery of a previously unknown Iron Age settlement, as well ...