The vast deserts of the American West posed logistical problems for the US Army. Camels offered a novel solution.

Two recent books, The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin by Dan Edelstein and Revolutions: A ...

How to read more? We might take instruction from a more leisurely age.

The emirate of Granada – Islam’s last polity in Spain – was surrendered to the Catholic monarchs on 2 January 1492.

The body belonged to Charles d’Espagne, constable of France and its most powerful figure after the king, Jean II. The man ...

Long before Louis Braille’s time, attempts had been made to create embossed letters or shapes on wood or paper to enable the blind to read by touch. After the Napoleonic Wars, a French artillery ...

The stroke of midnight that ushered in New Year’s Day 1961 tolled the funeral bell for the farthing. Originally a fourthling, or fourth part of a penny, Britain’s tiniest coin had a history stretching ...

It was the Gadsden Purchase that settled the main boundaries of the United States of America (though Alaska was added in 1867). The Louisiana Purchase of fifty years earlier, the biggest land sale in ...

Since the early 1760s the great Austrian composer had been master of music to the Esterhazy family, the leading Hungarian aristocrats in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At their palace in Hungary he ...

The rules for young officers at West Point Military Academy in New York were strict. Alcohol possession could lead to expulsion and even smoking tobacco could affect one’s chances of graduating. Of ...

Queen Victoria herself was asked to choose a capital for the province of Canada, which at that time consisted of the two colonies of Quebec and Ontario, and there’s a story that she simply stuck a ...

The composer of the Daphnis and Chloe ballet, the ever-popular Bolero, the Pavane for a Dead Infanta and a piano concerto for the left hand among many admired works was 62 when he died. From his ...