History Revealed

Amid months of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the Ethiopian empire and Fascist Italy, Bernard Tussaud – great-greatgrandson of Madame Tussaud – holds aloft wax heads depicting the two powers’ leaders: Haile Selassie I and Benito Mussolini

An ancient stone ‘scoreboard’ measuring just over 32cm in diameter and weighing 40kg has been unearthed by archaeologists at the famous Maya complex of Chichén Itzá on the Yucatán Peninsula. The circular object, which depicts two players standing ove

The Napoleonic Wars – a series of conflicts fought across Europe between 1803–15 – saw Britain and France wrestle for European supremacy. It is an era of history that saw the meteoric rise and fall of one of history's most divisive figures: Napoleon

WHO INVENTED PRINTING, AND WHEN DID IT DEVELOP? There is some debate about where and when printing first developed. Although the ancient Egyptians used woodblock printing to mark textiles, the technology was refined in China and Korea, probably aroun

On 18 June 1429, French and English forces clashed outside the village of Patay in the Loire Valley. Assured of victory by the ‘holy’ conviction of a teenage peasant girl, the French surprised their adversary, smashing through the English line and de

Amateur scientist Caroline Kennard (1827–1907) was a prominent member of a movement in Boston, Massachusetts, striving to raise the status of women in society. In 1881, she was shocked to hear another woman cite Charles Darwin's theory of evolution b

Q: What were the Napoleonic Wars? A: The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts that occurred between 1803 and 1815. The wars were centred around Napoleon and Napoleonic France, but their impact was much wider than just Europe, with repercussions

In the closing months of the 18th century, the French Revolution – by this stage a decade old – was not in good health. Stymied by ongoing conflict with various coalitions of other European powers in the French Revolutionary Wars, the new republic lu

Although the customs of 19thcentury warfare meant that the Napoleonic Wars were a predominantly male affair, women were present both on the battlefields and in the corridors of power. Napoleon's government itself represented a compromise between the

DID YOU KNOW? SQUARE RULES When Napoleon's troops faced Mamluk forces at the battle of the Pyramids near Cairo during his invasion of Egypt in 1798, he devised a new divisional square tactic – one that proved hugely effective during the many clashes

“May God cause the upheaval in France to spread like syphilis to the enemies of the empire… Amen.” So wrote Ahmed Efendi, privy secretary to Ottoman Sultan Selim III, in January 1792. His prayer was answered over the following few years, as the Frenc

Inevitably, as imperial frictions between the European belligerents exploded, fighting in the Napoleonic Wars spilled over into Asia. The most important battleground was India, where the long-running FrancoBritish struggle was intermeshed with the cr

On 3 December 1805, William Clark carved his name and the words “By Land from the U. States in 1804 & 1805” into a tree on North America's Pacific coast. In May 1804, Clark had set out with Meriwether Lewis on an expedition commissioned by President

In June 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 men. It was a disastrous campaign that saw up to 90 per cent of them become casualties. Plagued with supply issues and heat exhaustion, an indecisive battle at Borodino saw Napoleon march into Moscow

Contrary to the popular belief that mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age, small numbers of the huge mammals survived in several locations for another 6,000 years or so. In fact, a population of woolly mammoths

From 1940, the Allied war effort received a huge boost when scientists at Bletchley Park became able to decipher encrypted instructions sent by the Nazi military command using the Enigma machine. Being able to read these messages proved to be a vital

At the start of World War II, a talented team of mathematicians and cryptologists was gathered at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. Initially aided by the Polish intelligence services, they were charged with cracking the German Enigma machine, used

Beata Beatrix On 10 February 1862, Dante Gabriel Rossetti discovered his beloved wife and muse, Elizabeth Siddal, unconscious in bed, an empty bottle of laudanum at her side. Frantic and unable to rouse her, Rossetti summoned doctor after doctor, but

DID YOU KNOW? TOO GOOD TO WASTE Designed by Sir John Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, the original stadium was only intended to be a temporary structure for the British Empire Exhibition (see page 60). It was saved by businessmen Arthur Elvin and Sir Jame

238 The number of years that the fountain of a topless woman in Treviso, Italy, dispensed wine to celebrate the election of a new mayor – white from one breast and red from the other. Who were the Tarim Mummies? SHORT ANSWER Despite their unusual cha

ONE TO WATCH Great Coastal Railway Journeys / BBC Two and BBC iPlayer, from May It's more than a decade since Michael Portillo, clutching a battered vintage copy of the travel book Bradshaw's Guide and inevitably dressed in pastel colours, first set

BOOK OF THE MONTH By Tracy Borman Hodder & Stoughton, £25, hardback, 320 pages Herself a Tudor titan, Elizabeth I also claimed two historical heavyweights – Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn – as parents, and this latest offering from leading expert Tracy B

I am disappointed that you failed to include Norham Castle in Northumberland in your list of British castles to visit (May 2023). Norham commands a vital ford over the River Tweed, and was besieged by the Scots on numerous occasions. Robert the Bruce

In a fascinating episode recorded in spring 2019, medieval historian Levi Roach describes how Norse people raided, explored and settled far beyond their Scandinavian homelands. Some even sailed across the Atlantic to North America, building a base in

Three men atop one of the pyramids of Giza watch as the German-built LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin floats over the ancient necropolis near Cairo, Egypt. Launched in 1928 and named after airship pioneer Ferdinand von Zeppelin – a Graf (count) of the German ari

Discover what life was like for soldiers on the front line – from sanitation and disease, to the horrors of the Somme PLUS… IN PICTURES: AMERICA'S INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN A NUTSHELL: THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLAND CHEVALIER D'ÉON, THE SECRET AGENT WHO LI