Short History Of...

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. 500 years old and just 77x53cm in size, it is kept behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre museum in Paris, where it draws 10 mil...

In 1947, the British divided up its former colony of India into two provinces. What followed was confusion, chaos, and an unprecedented wave of sectarian violence that left up to a million dead. 15 mi...

At approximately 8:13 p.m. on November 24th, 1971, a hijacker exited Northwest Airlines flight 305 at an altitude of 10,000 feet, carrying just a case, a bagful of money, and a parachute. The subseque...

Retaining the title of the “Queen of Crime” to this day, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Across 66 novels, 14 short-story collections, and 20 stage plays, she depicted the ev...

Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland suffered an appalling famine after the repeated failure of the potato crop, its national staple. But though caused by a natural blight, a combination of ancient prejudic...

Best known for its world-class casinos and lavish hotels, the desert city of Las Vegas, Nevada has a darker side, too. For decades, connections to organised crime tarnished its reputation. Now, Las Ve...

No single writer has shaped the way we speak and think more than William Shakespeare. Whether we’re being cruel to be kind, wearing our hearts on our sleeves, or spotting the green eye’d monster — it’...

It’s Christmas eve, 1914. On the Western Front, a British soldier peers out across No Man’s Land. A sound catches his attention – not artillery fire, but music. The enemy are singing Silent Night. The...

Pocahontas is probably the best known Native American in history. But the true story of her life has been eclipsed by a fictionalised version, played out as a romance between an intrepid English capta...

Abraham Lincoln’s life reads like an American folk tale. The story of a boy born into poverty, whose drive and determination saw him become the most powerful man in the nation. But how did he navigate...