British engineer Sir Frank Whittle patented his pioneering design for the turbojet engine in 1932. His invention would go on ...

To take on a job as an apprentice or female domestic servant usually required living under the same roof as the employer. Not ...

There have been many reincarnations of London Bridge since the original Roman crossing in AD50. The most famous and longstanding of these was the “Old” Medieval bridge, finished in 1209 during the ...

Legend has it that Robin Hood was an outlaw living in Sherwood Forest with his ‘Merry Men’ – but did he really exist? There are several versions of the Robin Hood story. The Hollywood one is that of ...

In March 1987, the ferry The Herald of Free Enterprise sank off Zeebrugge with the loss of 188 lives. This great tragedy occurred because the roll-on/roll-off ferry had sailed with its bow doors open, ...

Please note that Platform 9 ¾ has moved! Click here to jump down to the updated part of this article. For those of you that have ever read a Harry Potter book or seen one of the films, Platform 9 ¾ ...

“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn.” So wrote Samuel Johnson and for many, this remains true today. Think of an ...

“There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.” Oscar Wilde in his novel, ‘The Picture of ...

The Highland Clearances remain a controversial period in Scotland’s history and are still talked of with great bitterness, particularly by those families who were dispossessed of their land and even, ...

Who are the British? Do they really drink tea, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and never leave home without an umbrella? Find out more about true Brits; past and present, myth and legend, fact ...

We take single-sex public toilets for granted today. It is hard to believe that when public conveniences were first constructed, the vast majority of these toilets were just for men. Great Exhibition ...

Wilbur Wright commented in 1909: “About 100 years ago, an Englishman, Sir George Cayley, carried the science of flight to a point which it had never reached before and which it scarcely reached again ...