USA

The United States battleship was blown up in an explosion during Cuba's uprising against Spain. What caused the explosion and who was responsible?

Ian Fitzgerald describes the maiden flight of the 'Spruce Goose', the largest seaplane ever built, on November 2nd, 1947.

John Cabot set sail from Bristol, England, looking for a route to the west on May 20th 1497.

Martin Pugh charts the Women's Movement's origins and growth 1850-1939.

Dan Leab looks at a classic Cold War movie and the shadowy figure who inspired it.

Edward Ranson on the house race that split and defined a fin-de-siecle US.

Gerd Horten on how 'soaps' helped win the war after Pearl Harbor.

David Ellwood discusses America's cultural take-over of Europe in a seemingly innocent Italian 1950s comedy called "Un Americano a Roma". The comedy features a hapless hero whose attempts to Americanise himself mirror Italy's struggle to handle a clash of cultures after World War II.

Shell-shocked - a phrase redolent of the Western Front and the Great War. But was it also a reality fifty years earlier on the killing fields of Virginia? John Talbott investigates.

Alan Taylor examines how the social concerns and ambitions of the new republic and those of the author of Last of the Mohicans intertwined - and how they gave him the canvas to become the United States' first great novelist.