The Berlin Wall in October 1988.
360b/Shutterstock.com
East Germans feel alienated and powerless. They see themselves as second-class citizens, while outsiders live high on what is rightfully theirs.
NBC Berlin correspondent Piers Anderton inside the tunnel during the network’s 1962 escape project.
Special Collections & University Archives, University of Maryland
A media historian uses declassified government documents to show how both sides of the Iron Curtain worked to have the projects canned.
The inventor with his eponymous weapon.
AP Photo/Vladimir Vyatkin
One hundred years ago, the inventor of the most deadly weapon of the 20th century was born in Russia. Now more than 100 million of his namesake guns have been manufactured and used around the world.
Yann Forget/Wikimedia Commons
In 1989, Francis Fukuyama pronounced that history had ended. How wrong he was.
A satirical photograph from 1901, where men’s and women’s dress and jobs are switched.
Underwood & Underwood/Wikimedia Commons.
For most of the Victorian era, people thought it was normal for men and women to be treated differently, and judged by different standards.
Fashion has changed a lot more than the tube since 1906.
Wikipedia
It’s hotter and more crowded on the Underground but some things have got better for commuters.
NASA ‘could not imagine the radical effect of seeing the Earth’ from the moon. In the face of a climate catastrophe, we all need to step back and see the Earth again.
Bill Anders/NASA/Handout
Historical perspective can offer much in this time of ecological crisis,. Many historians are reinventing their traditional scales of space and time to tell different kinds of stories that recognise the unruly power of nature.
A young girl is inoculated with typhoid, Texas, 1943.
Wikimedia Commons
We’ve known how to control typhoid for over 100 years. The rapid current increase of drug-resistant variants in both rich and poor countries is down to decades of short-sighted global health policies.
The anti-transportation ‘ladies petition’ from 1850 is one of the first concrete examples of political engagement by women in the NSW colony.
Parliament of NSW
A newly-discovered petition from 1850 provides rare evidence of what might be women’s first moment of political activism in Australia.
A girl from El Salvador leaves a shelter in Buffalo, New York.
Reuters/Chris Helgren
Over the past few decades, the US has gradually lowered the ceiling for refugees.
A team photograph of the 1919 Chicago White Sox squad, many of whom would be implicated in throwing that year’s World Series.
Heritage Auctions
Up until the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, gambling and baseball had a marriage of convenience. A century later, gambling is again being seen as a solution to the sport’s woes.
Researchers used a statistical algorithm to analyse written texts between 1820-2009 in four Western countries.
sirtravelalot/Shutterstock
Of the countries we looked at, all have seen an increase in subjective happiness since the 1970s.
An employee creates punch cards using information from a filled in 1950 Census Population Form.
U.S. Census Bureau
As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card.
Did ancient Egyptian parents worry their kids might get addicted to this game, called senet?
Keith Schengili-Roberts/Wikimedia Commons
Somewhere between the early Buddhist times and today, worries about game addiction have given way to scientific understanding of the benefits of play, rather than its detriments.
Shutterstock
The Southern Ocean, as artists have uncovered, is also a treasure trove of cultural narratives.
Now part of history.
Markus Mainka / Shutterstock.com
Thomas Cook may be history – but that history is about to be lost.
Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani in late November 2016, after Trump won the presidential election.
AP/Carolyn Kaster
A former congressional staffer says withholding damning evidence from Congress and using civilians to carry out presidential or intelligence agency agendas links the Ukraine crisis to other scandals.
Clifford Berry stands by the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.
Courtesy of Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives
The first computer, named the ABC, was built at Iowa State University. But for a long time, few had heard of it.
Kinga Cichewicz/Unsplash
As early as the 1860s the twin diseases of modernity – overwork and sleeplessness – became the focus of cultural anxieties.
History can come alive.
Michal Bednarek/Shutterstock.com
A new genre of video games lets players explore virtual environments that recreate actual places and real people’s lives and memories.