An artistic impression of how the Newport Medieval ship may have looked .
David Jordan/Newport Museums and Heritage Service
The Newport medieval ship is the most complete section of a 15th-century European vessel discovered to date.
Human remains dating back more than 30,000 years were found at Paviland cave in Gower.
Left: Leighton Collins/Shutterstock; right: Ethan Doyle White CC BY-SA 3.0.
It’s been 200 years since the discovery of one of the oldest human burial sites in western Europe on the Gower peninsula in south Wales.
Plaques commemorating artists who were killed by the Nazis are marked with flowers in Austria in 2020.
Barbara Gindl/APA/AFP via Getty Images
Spain has long avoided addressing the fact that tens of thousands of Spaniards were victims of Nazis, who collaborated with Spain’s former dictator, Francisco Franco.
French president Emmanuel Macron greets the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris Chems-Eddine Hafiz in October 2022.
Ludovic Marin/AFP
Liberal schools of thought largely inform how Muslims are viewed across Europe, research finds.
German troops marching through Tunis in 1943.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
People across much of North Africa were subject to racist laws and suffering at the hands of European powers during the Second World War.
Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev, left, met with U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Vienna in 1961.
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The US and the Soviet Union never engaged in direct combat, but their influences were felt worldwide, including in armed conflicts involving other nations.
In Westeros, Rhaenyra finds herself in a power struggle akin to that of the real-life Empress Matilda, who lived from 1102 to 1167.
HBO
During a two-decade period of English history known as the Anarchy, a woman sought to make the then-unprecedented move of ascending to the English throne.
Stan
Catherine de’ Medici was Queen of France, the mother of three kings and two queens, and the mother-in-law of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Pope John Paul I greets the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican in August 1978.
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Popes’ roles have changed over time. Some periods produced plenty of saintly popes, while others are notorious for the opposite.
During the Cold War, Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union was tightly restricted.
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During the Cold War, Russia’s refusal to allow Jews to leave the country reflected its political aims. The same is likely true today, a Jewish studies scholar explains.
‘A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding,’ a 19th-century painting by Russian artist Vassily Maximov.
Tretyakov Gallery/Wikimedia Commons
The idea of a ‘witch’ was usually female in Western Europe, but not so in Orthodox Russia – partly because of the period’s rigid social hierarchies.
Confession, circa 1460/1470. Artist unknown.
Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images
Churches’ struggles to respond to the plague and constant warfare in the 14th and 15th centuries helped shape the kinds of Christianity in the world today.
A Ukrainian service member takes a photograph of a damaged church after shelling in a residential district in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 10, 2022.
AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
Religion plays an important role in expansive views of Russian nationhood. But faith has played a role in Ukrainian nationalism, too.
St Andrew’s Church, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Bossi/Flickr
Straight from our experts, here are five books to help you understand what’s happening right now in Ukraine and Russia, from a must-read history of Ukraine to a literary classic with insights into the Russian soul.
Ukraine’s fight for independence can be traced to the 19th century when it was under the control of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. Ukrainians, then as now, believe they have an identity separate from Russia.
(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Ukrainians believe they have an identity separate from Russia. Russia, on the other hand, believes that Ukraine and Russia share the same history.
A group of schoolgirls in Czyzew, Poland, before the Holocaust.
Czyżew Yizkor Book by Shimon Kanc/New York Public Library
Yom HaShoah is a day to commemorate the murder of 6 million Jews – but also their lives. Yizker bikher books lovingly document Jewish communities across Europe.
Family or just friends: a monument to the friendship of Russia and Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine.
SAGAPHOTO.COM/Alamy Stock Photo
The two countries have a lot of shared history, but Ukraine has a distinct and independent past.
The ‘Malleus Maleficarum,’ a medieval handbook, was used to try and execute supposed witches. Its influence lasted for centuries – including at the Salem Witch Trials.
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Witch trials relied on a medieval text called the “Malleus Maleficarum” – a book this reference librarian can hold in her hands.
Modern vampires like Dracula may be dashing, but they certainly weren’t in the original vampire myths.
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The past century’s vampires have often been a bit dashing, even romantic. That’s not how the myth started out.
A wolf in the Białowieża Forest, Poland.
EPA-EFE/Wojciech Pacewicz
Historians and scientists discovered how colonisation in eastern Europe changed ecosystems – and the societies embedded in them.