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Portraits of an American community of colour

c. 1904 Portrait of the Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family. Virginia-born coachman Thomas A. Dillon and his wife, Margaret, a domestic ...

The Literary Club formed by CS Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, otherwise known as 'The Inklings'

If you could name a writing group what better name than 'The Inklings'? That's what an informal group of writers that included C.S. Lewis...

When Elizabeth Taylor introduced David Bowie to John Lennon

If you had to pinpoint the two most iconic figures from the history of British music, chances are the answer you would be met with is Dav...

The Bloody Attempt to Kidnap Princess Anne

There were seven men in total who tried to stop Ian Ball, an unemployed laborer from north London, from kidnapping Princess Anne, Queen E...

The Glorious Yet Now Abandoned Constanța Casino

In 1903, local Romanian politicians agreed that it was time for the city of Constanța to have a modern casino, "...like those which inspi...

Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter to the Future Must Be Taken Seriously Today.

In 1988, Kurt Vonnegut wrote his famous Letter to the Future and addressed it to Ladies & Gentlemen of A.D. 2088. In it, Vonnegut express...

The Berlin Wall - Before And After

The Berlin Wall, in its existence as much as in its demise, was a symbol. Dividing East and West Germany for close to 30 years, the openi...

An Extraordinary Map of Battle Death-"Body Density Maps", 1918

At first glance this detailed and dense map looks foreboding and somehow off-putting--at least for me, and that was before I understood w...

Marie Antoinette: The True Story Of The Controversial Teen Queen Of France

Crowned when she was only 18, Marie Antoinette was reviled for buying gowns and diamonds while her kingdom starved. But how much of her r...

Meet An 11th Generation Lincoln

The image above pairs the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, with Ralph Lincoln, an 11th generation Lincoln and third ...

Sorosis: The NYC Women-Only Club That Started An American National Movement

After being rejected by their male literary peers, women writers of New York City joined forces to create their own club called Sorosis —...

Manoir Colimaçon: An Abandoned Beauty, Near Paris

Built in 1882, this superb building was originally a house with about twenty windows and a carriage entrance. Around 1920, this house was...

Meet Matthew Henson, The First Black Explorer To Make It To The North Pole

Many have lay claim to being the first human to set foot in the Arctic. But few of them has as strong a claim to the title as Matthew Hen...

Horatio Nelson: From Frail Boy to National Hero

Often maggot-infested, the food was disgusting, living quarters were tiny and discipline was extremely strict, with the threat of lashing...

A Great Day in Harlem: behind Art Kane's classic 1958 jazz photograph

The young art director’s idea to photograph as many of the luminaries of the New York jazz scene as possible together for Esquire’s 1959 ...

The Woman Who Disguised Herself As A Man For Decades To Practice Surgery Before Women Were Allowed

When renowned surgeon Dr. James Barry passed in 1865, his housemaid Sophia Bishop made a startling discovery: Barry was biologically fema...

How Drugs Like Pervitin And Cocaine Fueled The Nazis’ Rise And Fall

Despite Hitler's anti-drug rhetoric, Nazi Germany used a little courage pill called Pervitin to take Europe by storm. It turns out it was...

The Glorious Inside of a 1926 Rolls-Royce Phantom

The car was commissioned by business baron Clarence Gasque for his wife Maude, a devotee of 18th-century French design, and it remains on...

The Story Of The Great Dictator

In the autumn of 1938, when the Munich Agreement was being signed in Europe, Charles Chapin was putting the finishing touches to the firs...

When Bob Marley and Johnny Nash played a school in Peckham together.

In March 1972, Bob Marley and Johnny Nash performed a free gig at a secondary school in south London (above) after a chance encounter wit...

The Execution of Dafydd ap Gruffydd

Today is October 3rd, and on this date, in 1283, Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales, was executed. Dafydd was one of four sons of Gr...

Say Hello To The Man Who Saved The World

Everybody in the world born before October 27, 1962 probably owes their life to Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov. He was the Russian naval o...

The Tragedy of Aberfan

It was a heartbreaking tragedy known across the world by the name of the South Wales village where it happened: Aberfan. On this day mill...

A Grim History of London's Speakers' Corner

October 14, 1855 — A carpenter mounted his soapbox on this day complaining about high food prices – and became the first recorded amateur...

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