It’s bad news for local newspapers, with reports that they have reached their lowest numbers since the 18th century. How will historians study the provincial past when they can’t read all about it?
To justify their use in an increasingly anxious Cold War world, nuclear weapons were rebranded as a force for good.
Paris was flooded with Eau de Cologne during the early years of Napoleon’s rule. Everyone was using it and everyone was selling it.
Talk of a Balkan federation became a hot topic at the end of the Ottoman Empire, eventually dying a death at the dawn of the Cold War. Was Europe’s ‘Little Orient’ destined to fall apart?
Once the Second World War was won, Winston Churchill had two preoccupations: preserving his place in posterity and making lots of money. If they could be achieved simultaneously, so much the better.
The story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is typically one of defiance against the odds during the Holocaust. But what of those unable to fight?
Belief in Prester John, a lost Christian king ruling over a distant kingdom, gripped medieval Europe for half a millennium. Once seen as a saviour, he would become an adversary.
The Archpriest Avvakum Petrov was burned in Pustozersk on 14 April 1682.
