History Today

New documents have come to light which help to explain why John Harrison refused to compete for the Longitude prize even though his sea-clock appeared to work well.

Greening urban landscapes is nothing new, says Joyce Ellis, the Georgians were Greens too.

Jabulani Maphalala recalls the calamatious effects of a white man’s war on the Zulu people caught between them.

Susan Cohen and Clive Fleay rediscover the forgotten lives and work of three women who sought to alleviate the plight of Britain’s Edwardian underclass.

David Braund re-examines what we know about Britain at the time of the Roman invasions.

In May 1941 Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, landed in Scotland. But historians differ over the true nature of his mission.

Michael Sturma finds parallels in contemporary accounts of abductions by space aliens with European narratives of captivity by Indians and Aboriginals in early America and Australia.

The great opera premiered in Rome on January 14th, 1900.

Stephen Gundle settles in the stalls to re-view the epochal Fellini film that defined the hedonistic spirit of post-war Italy.

On January 31st, 1950, Truman announced that he had directed the Atomic Agency Commission 'to continue with its work on all forms of atomic energy weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super-bomb'.