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The mystery of the five wounds
On September 14, 1224, a Saturday, Francis of Assisi—noted ascetic and holy man, future saint—was preparing to enter the second month of a retreat with a few close companions on Monte La Verna,...
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The great tea race
Captain John Keay, master of the crack new British clipper ship Ariel, had good reason to feel pleased with himself. He had secured the first cargo of tea to come to market at the great Chinese port of...
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The Christmas Truce
Even at the distance of a century, no war seems more terrible than World War I. In the four years between 1914 and 1918, it killed or wounded more than 25 million people–peculiarly horribly, and (in...
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The most terrible tunnel
At the beginning of the 19th century, the port of London was the busiest in the world. Cargoes that had traveled thousands of miles, and survived all the hazards of the sea, piled up on the wharves of...
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The Monster of Glamis
“If you could even guess the nature of this castle’s secret,” said Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore, “you would get down on your knees and thank God it was not yours.” That awful secret was...
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The mysterious Mr. Zedzed, the wickedest man in the world
Late in November 1927, an elderly Greek man sat in his mansion in Paris and tended a fire. Every time it flickered and threatened to die, he reached to one side and tossed another bundle of papers or a...
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On heroic self-sacrifice
No nation is short of monuments to its heroes. From the Lincoln Memorial and Nelson’s Column to the infamous gold-plated statue of Turkmenbashi—which until its recent demolition sat atop a...
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Closing the Pigeon Gap
At midnight on November 12, 1870, two French balloons, inflated with highly flammable coal gas and manned by desperate volunteers, took off from a site in Monmartre, the highest point in Paris. The...
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Run out of town on an ass: how Queen Victoria (allegedly) struck Bolivia off...
To be one of Queen Victoria’s ambassadors in the middle of the 19th century, when British power was at its height, was to be something close to a king—in parts of the world, close to a god. Backed by...
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The worst job there has ever been
Life in a nineteenth century city could be blissful… if you were one of the Victorian era’s 1%. For the great majority, though, it involved little that would be familiar to readers of Austin, Trollope...
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Fishmonger’s Hall: How William Crockford beggared the British aristocracy
William Crockford—identified here as “Crockford the Shark”—sketched by the great British caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson in about 1825. Rowlandson, himself an inveterate gambler who blew his way...
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The crucifixion of Prince Klaas: Antigua’s disputed slave rebellion of 1736
Prince Klaas, leader of the supposed slave rebellion on Antigua, on the wheel. Not every slave shipped to the New World from Africa ended up in the Deep South of the United States. In fact, well over...
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“My little soldier”
The funeral of James Idle in the village of Hullavington, on August 29, 1914. Picture the British countryside and the chances are that you are picturing the unmatched beauty of the Cotswolds, in...
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The secret plot to rescue Napoleon by submarine
Tom Johnson, the famous smuggler, adventurer, and inventor of submarines, sketched in 1834 for the publication of Scenes and Stories by a Clergyman in Debt. Napoleon Bonaparte caused so much damage –...
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The blood eagle
Vikings as portrayed in a 19th-century source: fearsome warriors and sea raiders. Things not to do when you travel in time. No.238: don’t kill a Viking, then let yourself get captured by his vengeful...
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Friedrich Engels’ Irish muse
Friedrich Engels lived a life replete with contradiction. He was a Prussian communist, a keen fox-hunter who despised the landed gentry, and a mill owner whose greatest ambition was to lead the...
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Stoney Jack and the Cheapside Hoard
Maverick archaeologist George Fabian Lawrence– better known as Stoney Jack, the navvies’ friend. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark. Only without Nazis. And in Wandsworth. It was only a small shop in an...
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The last secret of the H.L. Hunley
James R. McClintock, the inventor of the H.L. Hunley, shortly before journeying to Boston in February 1879–apparently to meet his end there. Image: Naval Historical Center. At a quarter to nine on the...
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Friedrich Engels’ Irish muse
Portrait of a young revolutionary: Friedrich Engels at age 21, in 1842, the year he moved to Manchester–and the year before he met Mary Burns. Friedrich Engels lived a life replete with contradiction....
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Queen Victoria’s £5: the strange tale of Turkish aid to Ireland during the...
A destitute Irish family search a stubble field for healthy potatoes at the height of the Great Famine of 1845-51. At least a million people–one in eight of the population–starved to death during the...
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