Written medieval records clearly show that women publicly and successfully reported men to the local authorities for sexual assault.

Artists like Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hendrick Avercamp documented locals' resilience in the face of freezing winters and food shortages

The convict ships that colonized Australia carried people desperate to get out of their sentence. At least, that was true of Michael Stewart.

The resistance and unionism of enslaved and freed Black women in the midst of the Confederacy is an epic story of sacrifice for nation and citizenship.

Some codpieces had cute little bows on them.

Medieval barbers didn’t just give haircuts – they performed a variety of surgeries, from tooth extraction to amputation

By Matúš Lazar Alongside his doctoral research on public history, Matúš Lazar also runs a YouTube channel under the name M. Laser. In this post, he discusses his experience in producing historical …

Pirates, kings and kidnappers feature in songs on website showcasing origins of modern music industry

New historical discoveries cast light on the Vatican’s response to the Holocaust

These cosy, wardrobe-like pieces of furniture could reportedly sleep up to five people. Why did they fall out of fashion?

The Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic 110 years ago tonight

More than a century before the Eurostar and LeShuttle, a group of engineers and statesmen dreamed (and fretted) about connecting Britain to France with an underwater tunnel. Peter Keeling drills into the history of this submarine link, and finds a still-relevant story about the cosmopolitan hopes an...

The city was built 2,500 years ago but may have been abandoned after a volcanic eruption.

Scientists recently analyzed a Peruvian 10-cent piece with an unexplained origin.

This strange volume puts the lie to Ditchfield’s title: tyrants, not books, kill authors.

Some of the fixes put in place in 1999 are still used today to keep the world’s computer systems running smoothly

From 1920s manga to Captain Marvel to Calvin and Hobbes, there’s no telling what treasures you’ll uncover at this unique institution.

On Milan Hausner, the Sadská clinic, and the rise and fall of LSD psychotherapy behind the Iron Curtain.

A wide variety of documentaries about Palestine and therefore also the state known as Israel. Some are quite old and difficult to find on the regular web, but others are of a more recent date and e...

Ars chats with historian Rebecca Simon about her most recent book, The Pirates' Code.

Sir Humphry Davy’s unpublished verse – including one published below for the first time – was found in notebooks alongside details of his groundbreaking experiments

Roman soldiers weren't paid in salt, and they weren't given "salt money". Dictionaries of the 1700s and early 1800s are to blame for this myth.

Christmas is a time for tradition, and the University of Oxford is well known for diligently preserving its traditions for centuries. Many of these have long outlived the people who established the…

The Chinchorro culture began mummifying their dead in what is now southern Peru and northern Chile around 6000 BCE,...

From its mythic beginnings in a Chinese garden, the story of silk is a window into how weaving has shaped human history

Experts are still wondering how the Romans calculated with their number system.

Over a century ago, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a generation of writers wrote about what it was like to have your whole world melt away.

Bold and ruthless, King Harald Gormsson gave his name to the wireless technology that unites devices the way he united Scandinavia.

Low Country artists of the late Renaissance and Early Baroque eras captured the happiness and hardships of snowy winters—an ever rarer phenomenon now.

One of the most feared military weapons of the Middle Ages was the longbow, used to legendary effect by the English in The Hundred Years’ War. While the longbow has gone down in history as a mighty weapon, what exactly was it and why was it so effective?

Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting bore witness to the administrative acts that enabled the crimes committed against Polish Jews during World War II.

The evolution of the Roman army's gladius sword; from its Ancient Greek origins to the rise of the long sword.