Soldiers have been using white flags to signify capitulation for thousands of years. The ancient Roman chronicler Livy described a Carthaginian ship being decorated with “white wool and branches of olive” as a symbol of parley during the Second Punic War, and Tacitus later wrote of white flags being displayed as part of the surrender of More

Behind the jolly, red-suited, shopping mall Santa of today lies a real person-St. Nicholas of Myra, a Christian monk who lived in the third century A.D., in what is now Turkey. We know very few historical details of St. Nicholas’ life. Even the year of his death is uncertain, although both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have More

The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is often credited as being the first person to have circumnavigated the globe, but the reality of his journey is a bit more complicated. More

Depending on how you calculate things, several different states can lay claim to producing the most commanders in chief. Going by birthplace, Virginia is the winner, with eight of its native sons holding the country’s highest office (including four of the first five presidents): George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, More

Percy Pilcher was a naval engineer with a penchant for flying, and he came close to discovering the secrets of powered flight in Britain four years before the Wright brothers took to the air in the United States. More

The Civil War began in 1642, when Charles I left London, having failed to arrest his enemies in parliament. It ended in 1646 when the king surrendered to the Scots. Before the king’s execution in 1649, a further civil war was fought as royalists in Kent, South Wales and Scotland took up arms against the New Model Army of parliament. The 1648 More

Between 14 October 1066, when Harold II was killed at the battle of Hastings, and 25 December, when William I was crowned at Westminster Abbey, England was ruled, at least in theory, by Edgar Atheling, who took the title Edgar II, the last of the Saxon kings. More

Most of us are familiar with British history’s landmark events: the Roman invasion, the battle of Hastings, Magna Carta, the Reformation and so forth. But what about the overlooked, lesser-known moments? In his new book, Philip Laycock takes readers on a journey through Britain’s hidden history More

Theodore Roosevelt was the first commander in chief to travel outside the U.S. on official business, when he sailed to Panama in November 1906. Roosevelt made the trip in order to inspect the construction of the Panama Canal, a project he’d championed. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, Franklin, became the first More

From the Middle Ages to the late 17th-century, the so-called “philosopher’s stone” was the most sought-after goal in the world of alchemy, the medieval ancestor of chemistry. According to legend, the philosopher’s stone was a substance that could turn ordinary metals such as iron, tin, lead, zinc, nickel or copper into precious metals like More

October 8, 1871 is best known as the start date of the Great Chicago Fire, which leveled three square miles of property and claimed 300 lives. Yet the very same night the Windy City went up in flames, an even bigger and more devastating blaze tore through tiny Peshtigo, Wisconsin, a frontier boomtown located a few miles north of Green Bay. In just More

Legend has it that a young Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was bonked on the head by a falling piece of fruit, More