(L-R) The Princess of Wales on the cover of Tatler, Queen Victoria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, and a detail of Vices Overlook’d in the New Proclamation by James Gillray.
Hannah Uzor/Tatler, Royal Collection Trust / National Portrait Gallery. Montage created with Canva
British monarchs have grappled with issues of representation, accuracy and flattery in portraits since the Middle Ages.
Stevie Wonder.
Getty Images
Ghana has long attracted African Americans who have suffered racial injustices in the US.
Photo storage app features can determine which photos users are more often exposed to from within their collection.
(Shutterstock)
In April 2022, iPhone users were upset to learn about a restrictive feature on iPhones. The blocking of photos taken at sensitive locations raised concerns about how technologies manage our memories.
Remnants of Hurricane Fred sent rivers over their banks across western North Carolina in 2021.
North Carolina DOT
In the mountains, heavy downpours can be devastating, washing out roads and homes and triggering landslides.
Tacuinum Sanitatis: a 14th-century medieval handbook of health.
Album / Alamy Stock Photo
By 43AD, when southern Britain became a Roman colony under emperor Claudius, the island was populated by speakers of several Celtic languages.
Did this seal symbolize the order’s poverty, homosexuality or companionship with Christ?
Hinterkappelen/Wikimedia Commons
Warrior-monks crusaded for Christianity throughout medieval Europe. Adding to the ongoing mystery surrounding the military order is their enigmatic seal.
A Mona Lisa painting from the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, held in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.
Collection of the Museo del Prado
The Mona Lisa has traditionally been associated with Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant. But there’s plenty of evidence pointing to a different identity.
AP Photo Amy Conn-Gutierrez
Riverdance showed ‘traditional’ does not have to mean ‘frozen in the past’; traditional dance can be adapted for modern audiences.
The spinning wheel game ‘EO’ became popular after statutes banned gambling with devices featuring ‘numbers or figures.’
Heritage Art/Getty Images
Early writers on probability had explained how the ‘house advantage’ didn’t need to be large for a gambling enterprise to profit enormously. But gamblers and gambling operators were slow to catch on.
Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton and Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in Bridgerton.
Liam Daniel/Netflix
An estimated fifth of Londoners suffered from syphilis in the late 18th century and, behind closed doors, Regency Britons were engaged in extra martial affairs and even polyamory.
Liam Daniel/Neftlix
The ladies and gentlemen of the ton would have known a lot more about sex than the show would have you think.
Hundreds of BYD vehicles wait at a port in Suzhou, China, to ship out.
AFP via Getty Images
The early timing of Biden’s move, changing supply chains and national security fears suggest the tariffs might work this time, at least for a while.
Disney
Swift knows her lyrics will be scrutinised. So maybe she should have done a bit more research before saying she wanted to live in the 1830s.
Andrea Mantegna, Minerva (Athena) expelling Vices from the Garden of Virtue, from the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (c. 1499–1502).
Louvre Museum/Wikimedia Commons
Women’s participation in warfare is not a recent phenomenon. Women played many roles in the Italian Wars, which engulfed Europe between 1494 and 1559.
Educator Mary McLeod Bethune regularly wrote of her travels abroad.
Robert Abbott Sengstacke via Getty Images
A former archivist at Mary McLeod Bethune’s last residence in Washington, DC, recounts how the experience led her to see Bethune as a global figure.
Wolfilser/Shutterstock
The theory that money emerged naturally encourages people to believe free markets are natural systems in which governments only interfere. But this thinking is flawed.
Scene from The Tattooist of Auschwitz, directed by Tali Shalom-Ezer.
Stan Originals.
Holocaust stories have often been criticised for their distortions and misrepresentations, but they can also encourage audiences to learn from history.
The recreated head of Shanidar Z, made by the Kennis brothers for the Netflix documentary ‘Secrets of the Neanderthals’ based on 3D scans of the reconstructed skull.
BBC Studios/Jamie Simonds
Scientists can’t yet tell how soft tissue overlayed bones, so this reconstruction is inevitably based on artistic licence.
‘The Travellers’ Tour Through the United States’ is the earliest known board game to depict a map of North America.
Library of Congress
Few copies remain of the earliest known board game produced in the US.
A monument for al-Khwarizmi in Khiva, Uzbekistan.
MehmetO/Shutterstock
Our modern lives are influenced by algorithms at every step. We can trace this influence back more than 1,200 years ago – to a Muslim mathematician.