Articles

WWI saw the birth of an entirely new form of combat: lone men engaging the enemy in aerial dogfights. The victors became heroes back home, but this was as deadly an occupation as it was an exhilarating one. One bullet, an engine or structural...

The structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was discovered in 1953 by two molecular biologists, James Dewey Watson (1928-2025) and Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004). Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine...

The First World War (1914-18) witnessed an arsenal of new weapons as all sides were desperate to gain an advantage, particularly in the static trench warfare of the Western Front. There were some old tried-and-tested weapons like the Lee-Enfield...

The Battle of the Wilderness (5-6 May 1864) was the opening engagement of the Overland Campaign, a major Union offensive conducted during the final year of the American Civil War (1861-1865). It saw the Union Army of the Potomac, under Ulysses...

The Sandbar Fight of 19 September 1827 made James 'Jim' Bowie famous, as well as the Bowie knife – less than 10 years before the Alamo (where he fell alongside the heroes William Barret Travis and David Crockett) – but it was essentially...

Already subjected to constant bombardment by artillery, enemy sniper fire, and the awful living conditions, soldiers fighting in the muddy trenches of the First World War did not imagine their situation could get any worse. Then, from April...

There were around 15 non-combatants in the Alamo who survived the battle on the morning of 6 March 1836 and, among these, were two who became famous for their first-hand accounts of what happened during the 13-day siege of the Alamo and the...

Colonel José Enrique de la Peña (1807-1840) was an officer in the Mexican army during the Texas Revolution in 1836 and was present during the siege of the Alamo, participated in the Battle of the Alamo, and retreated from Texas after President/General...

The death of David 'Davy' Crockett at the Battle of the Alamo (6 March 1836) has been understood as a heroic last stand at least since 1880 when Texan historian Reuben M. Potter dismissed eyewitness accounts that Crockett had surrendered...

Though Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705) wed Charles II of England (reign 1660-1685) in a union of great political consequence, her life and impact in Restoration England remain largely overlooked in the English-speaking world. In her latest...