In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made its own re-ordering of the Ukrainian jigsaw. Western Ukraine was taken by Stalin from Poland at the end of the Second World War. Crimea was transferred by More

As Europe’s second largest country, its territory reaches deep into that of modern Russia, but it shares borders too with several EU members, including Poland and Hungary. More

The Crimean War of 1853–6 was, bar the Napoleonic Wars, the most significant conflict of the 19th century. It involved four major powers – Britain, France, Turkey (on one side) and Russia (on the More

Members from eastern Europe are calling for tough sanctions, while others, led by Germany, seek mediation. More

It is certainly true that Nazi Germany was extremely half-hearted in its efforts to bring Japan into the war against the Soviet Union. Indeed, despite the fact that the Nazis were both publicly and More

In 490 B.C., as the story goes, a Greek soldier ran from Marathon to Athens, a distance of just over 26 miles, to bring news of the Athenian victory over the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. More

If you take a good look, it may surprise you to learn how many of the objects that surround you every day were originally invented thousands of years ago by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans or More

In the first of two features on the Wars of the Three Kingdoms – of which the English Civil Wars were a part – Charlotte Hodgman talks to Professor John Morrill about eight places associated with More

The famous Newport Rising, which occurred in Monmouthshire in 1839, was an ugly offshoot of the Chartist movement demanding the vote for working-class men. More

Before the alphabet was invented, early writing systems had been based on pictographic symbols known as hieroglyphics, or on cuneiform wedges, produced by pressing a stylus into soft clay. Because More

Few symbols better captured the Cold War divide between western Europe and the Soviet bloc than the Berlin Wall, a concrete and barbed wire barrier that divided Germany’s largest city for nearly 30 More

The term democracy, which means “rule by the people,” was coined by the Greeks of ancient Athens to describe their city-state’s system of self-rule, which reached its golden age around 430 B.C. More

Thomson also recommended that the small, white eagle used in Barton’s design be replaced with an American bald eagle, and Congress adopted this design on June 20, 1782. More

Kissing Ireland’s Blarney Stone, a tradition that’s been around for several centuries, is said to give a person the gift of eloquence and persuasiveness. More

For ages, people used the sun to determine what time it was where they were. Every community set its clocks to noon based on when the sun reached its highest position in the sky; as a result, when it More

Most American women didn’t win the right to vote until the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, but the first female candidate for president came nearly 50 years earlier. More

The longest river in the world, measured from its mouth to its most distant, year-round source, is likely the Amazon, which flows 4,345 miles from the Peruvian Andes through Brazil to the Atlantic More

Most historians agree that American involvement in World War I was inevitable by early 1917, but the march to war was no doubt accelerated by a notorious letter penned by German foreign secretary More

The Great Sphinx of Giza, a giant limestone figure with the body of a lion and the head of a man wearing a pharaoh’s headdress, is the national symbol of Egypt—both ancient and modern—and one More

The oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one that survives today, the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed as a tomb for the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu. More

Pick any day in the Piazza del Duomo in the Italian city of Pisa, and you will undoubtedly spot a bunch of tourists posing for the same photo: hands outstretched towards the cathedral’s More

In the years after the Civil War ended, thousands of defiant and disillusioned Confederates fled Reconstruction-era Dixie and headed even farther south to Latin America. More

Following the U.S. Civil War, regiments of African-American men known as buffalo soldiers served on the western frontier, battling Indians and protecting settlers. More

Soldiers have been using white flags to signify capitulation for thousands of years. The ancient Roman chronicler Livy described a Carthaginian ship being decorated with “white wool and branches of More