Feature

The survival of the papacy has always been dependent on a precarious balancing act between the pope’s religious and secular powers.

As Late Imperial China sought to rebuild as a modern state from the ashes of war, a new national post office was born.

Pelayo, King of Asturias, is Spain’s first national hero, credited with beginning the Reconquista with his victory at the Battle of Covadonga. What do we really know about him?

American air raids on Japan’s capital burned the city in March 1945, killing 80,000 people in one night alone. ‘Had to be done’, said the general who ordered it. 

More than 100,000 people took up arms across the Holy Roman Empire in the spring of 1525. What drove them? And why were they ultimately crushed?

Written into history as the ‘Mad Duchess’ of Albemarle, what brought about the downfall of Elizabeth Cavendish?

In 1981, a horrific murder case required police in East Germany to go door-to-door collecting handwriting samples. There was no public outrage, because they were not told about the crime.

For the Portuguese empire to rise, an old world had to give way. Rivals in Europe’s lucrative spice trade, how much did they know about the powerful Mamluk sultanate?

British soldiers fighting in the American Revolutionary War were unprepared for the terrain awaiting them across the Atlantic. Many thought that America was determined to destroy them; some felt it had succeeded.

The first year of Edward I’s reign saw waves of strictures placed on a Jewish community in an already perilous situation. It set the path to their expulsion.