The Crimean War of 1853–6 was, bar the Napoleonic Wars, the most significant conflict of the 19th century. It involved four major powers – Britain, France, Turkey (on one side) and Russia (on the other) – and, in many ways, laid the groundwork for the First World War. More

Members from eastern Europe are calling for tough sanctions, while others, led by Germany, seek mediation. More

It is certainly true that Nazi Germany was extremely half-hearted in its efforts to bring Japan into the war against the Soviet Union. Indeed, despite the fact that the Nazis were both publicly and privately positive about the Japanese alliance, there was actually precious little strategic co-operation or collaboration between the two. More

women of Ancient Rome were forever subject to their fathers and husbands, to the point of having no legal rights over their own children. More

In the late fourth century, the Western Roman Empire crumbled after a nearly 500-year run as the world’s greatest superpower. Historians have blamed the collapse on hundreds of different factors ranging from military failures and crippling taxation to natural disasters and even climate change. Still others argue that the Roman Empire didn’t More

In 490 B.C., as the story goes, a Greek soldier ran from Marathon to Athens, a distance of just over 26 miles, to bring news of the Athenian victory over the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. After delivering his message, the soldier promptly died. Over the centuries, his story became conflated with that of another, more famous, Greek soldier: More

If you take a good look, it may surprise you to learn how many of the objects that surround you every day were originally invented thousands of years ago by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans or other societies. These advanced civilizations came up with ideas that would revolutionize their existence—and ours. Here are eight of the most useful More

In the first of two features on the Wars of the Three Kingdoms – of which the English Civil Wars were a part – Charlotte Hodgman talks to Professor John Morrill about eight places associated with the battles that took place across England, Scotland and Ireland from 1638–51. More

The suffragettes were by far the most prominent suffrage campaigners in Europe. Moderate suffrage campaigners elsewhere were gaining momentum in the decade before the First World War, spurred on by the first congress of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in Berlin in 1904. But no other European country witnessed anything like the More

Before the alphabet was invented, early writing systems had been based on pictographic symbols known as hieroglyphics, or on cuneiform wedges, produced by pressing a stylus into soft clay. Because these methods required a plethora of symbols to identify each and every word, writing was complex and limited to a small group of highly-trained More

In 1861, as a means of financing the American Civil War, the federal government began issuing paper money for the first time since the Continental Congress printed currency to help pay for the Revolutionary War (the earlier form of paper dollars, dubbed continentals, were produced in such high volume that they soon lost much of their value). In More

The marathon may have ancient roots, but the foot race’s official length of 26.2 miles wasn’t established until the 20th century. The first organized marathon was held in Athens at the 1896 Olympics, the start of the Games’ modern era. More