Britain probably obtained its first turkeys from the Spanish, who had brought the birds back to Europe after encountering them in the Aztec empire. However it’s possible that they were introduced by William Strickland, a Yorkshire merchant and MP who travelled to the New World in the 16th century. He certainly seems to have wanted to promote a More

The notoriety of this prince travelled far and wide until a well known shaikh in far away Shiraz in ancient Persia heard . “I must reform this prince before he squanders all his wealth on pomp and pleasure”, said the Shaikh to his followers. “I will travel to Samarqand and speak to him personally”. So saying, the Shaikh set off on foot for More

The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, is both a marvel of architecture and engineering, as well as a powerful symbol of Ancient Rome’s might and brutality. More

Babylon, one of the most famous cities from any ancient civilisation, was the capital of Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia. Today, that’s about 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq. More

This is a hotly disputed question. At the time, the Germans tended to blame the selfish ambitions particularly of Britain and Russia, while the Allies tended to blame German militarism and aggressive expansionism. More

With limited technology available, effective ‘in the field’ communication during the First World War was difficult. Communication was restricted mostly to physical message relaying, Morse signals, visual signals (lights and semaphore), and very basic radio communication where available. More

The sight of a speeding helicopter embarking upon a potentially life-saving rescue mission is today a familiar one, but when were aircrafts first used in such operations? More

From the Scottish physician who pronounced lobsters as being capable of love and ‘damned crabs’ as having hearts of stone, to the peculiar aristocrat who invented a tiny gun for shooting wasps, Britain has long been a stronghold of eccentricity and peculiar behaviour More

The Julian calendar, which was introduced in 45 BC by Julius Caesar. Based, in theory, on a solar year (the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun – actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds) it established a cycle of three years of 365 days, followed by a 366-day leap year. More

Archaeologically speaking, the earliest battle evidence from the British Isles comes from the Neolithic or New Stone Age, when the farmers were first competing for limited resources. More

In the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, there is a gallery which houses imperial artifacts from the British Raj. In a prominent section of the gallery that was opened by none other than Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, there is a collection of artifacts from Tipu Sultan of Mysore. The plaques attached to the artifacts pay glowing tribute to the Tiger More

A deeper look at the forces that led to the dissolution of the British Empire tells a different story. In this second narrative, it is the Indian army, rather than the political movement that emerges as the principal player in India’s freedom struggle. In this narrative, Muslim names have more than their share in the honor rolls of soldiers, men More