Cold War

John Herschel Glenn Jr was the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th 1962.

Depicted as a dangerous extremist and a threat to the civil rights movement, black activist Malcolm X was as much a beneficiary of the media as he was its victim.

Paul Lay pays tribute to the playwright, dissident and former Czech president, who has died aged 75.

Desperate to counter the industrial decline of the 1970s, Britain and France embraced the world’s first supersonic airliner: Concorde.

Andrew Boxer demonstrates the ways in which external events affected the struggles of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

Caught between the end of empire and the birth of NATO, Britain's postwar Labour government played a key role in the early stages of the Cold War.

Martin Evans introduces a short series looking at changing attitudes to history in the former Communist states.

Alex von Tunzelmann reassesses a two-part article on the troubled relationship between the United States and Cuba, published in History Today 50 years ago in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Perhaps the US-backed invasion of Fidel Castro's Cuba was inevitable, but its failure bucked the trend.

Rowena Hammal explains why the Korean War broke out in 1950.