Shutterstock
Purple was highly valued and associated with royalty, power, and prestige in various ancient cultures, including the Roman and Byzantine Empires. So how did red creep its way in?
Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort by Meynart Weywyck (circa 1510).
National Portrait Gallery
Beaufort’s presence at Collyweston formed part of a strategic plan, devised by mother and son, to exert royal influence both locally and nationally.
For love or money?
Kameleon007/iStock/Getty Images Plus
A growing number of Republicans say that you shouldn’t be able to divorce simply because you’ve fallen out of love. It’s an idea with a long history.
The SS Hartdale is lying at a depth of 80 metres, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.
Michael Roberts/Unpath’d Waters
The SS Hartdale was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 and its final resting place had long been unknown.
British soldiers questioning suspected members of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army near Gilgil, Kenya, on Jan. 8, 1953.
(AP Photo)
Operation Legacy highlights the repercussions faced when people with power determine what information is available to interpret events of the past.
Chris Tefme/Shutterstock
Victorian eugenicists perpetuated the idea that only white men went bald because of their intelligence.
Wager’s Action off Cartagena, 28 May 1708 by Samuel Scott (1772), a painting showing the moment the San José was blown up.
National Maritime Museum
The boat was sunk while still laden with treasure including 11 million gold and silver coins, emeralds and other precious cargo.
Baron Cobham and family around the dinner table, 1567.
Master of the Countess of Warwick
During the Tudor period, religious beliefs shaped people’s attitudes towards food and food waste.
Eve – Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1510)
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The story of human evolution is inextricable from the story of gynaecology.
The Vesuvius Challenge incentivizes technological development by inviting researchers to figure out how to ‘read’ ancient papyri excavated from volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Columns of Greek text retrieved from a portion of a scroll.
(Vesuvius Challenge)
However exciting the technological developments may be, the task of reading and analyzing the Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.
Several campaigns have been waged against statues linked to Africa’s colonial past.
Rodger Bosch/Getty Images
The fate of several colonial statues in Africa continues to be a subject of controversy.
‘The Drunkenness of Noah’ by Giovanni Bellini.
Wikimedia
For nearly 500 years, priests and imams justified slavery on the basis of a misunderstood passage of the Bible.
A photograph of the 2017 total solar eclipse, taken at the Oregon State Fair Grounds, Salem, Ore.
(Dominic Hart/NASA)
Mentions of total solar eclipses in ancient history help researchers pinpoint precise dates of notable events.
Christopher Nolan accepts the award for Best Director for ‘Oppenheimer’ during the Oscars on March 10, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, Calif.
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The success of ‘Oppenheimer’ at the Academy Awards presents an opportunity to think about critical criteria for viewing historical film — and what we are owed by historical filmmakers.
Democracy was enshrined in Roman currency.
American Numismatic Society
Fighting for voter access is an inevitable part of any democracy, from ancient Rome to the US today. Roman legislators were able to thwart elite political sway by introducing written ballots.
State Library of South Australia
I recently visited four historic houses in Victoria that are open to the public to get a better understanding of women who worked from home.
Noel Fielding in The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.
Apple+
Not the dandy highwayman of popular imagination, Dick Turpin was a violent and, according to records, ugly criminal.
Tony Curran (centre) as James I and Nicholas Galitzine (right) as George Villiers.
Rory Mulvey/Sky UK
It was sometimes thought that men who had sex with men would give birth to monsters.
Class, gender and religion influenced health care in early modern Spain and Latin America.
Diego Velázquez/The National Gallery
Early modern societies in Latin America and Spain saw a convergence of traditional medical knowledge and the professionalization of medicine. The resulting differences in access to care endure today.
Met Museum/National Portrait Gallery
What changing artistic depictions of women’s alopecia tells us about hair loss today.