British History

Religious lore suggests that God showed Patrick the entrance to purgatory, where the Irish could witness the consequences of not embracing Christianity with their own eyes.

St. Patrick Opened a Portal to Purgatory on This Little-Known Irish Island

Medieval pilgrims flocked to the site for spiritual purification

Experts have confirmed that the sword belonged to a Viking, dating it to between 850 and 975.

A 1,000-Year-Old Viking Sword Emerges From an English River

Discovered by a magnet fisher, the weapon dates to between 850 and 975, during the Vikings' violent conquest of Britain

Penguins surround the post office at Port Lockroy, a British outpost on Goudier Island.

You Could Run a 'Penguin Post Office' in Antarctica

Three new hires will spend five months living among gentoo penguins and sorting postcards at the world's southernmost post office

A video posted on social media shows a woman spraying red paint on the portrait, then cutting it with a handheld tool.

Pro-Palestinian Activists Damage Balfour Portrait at Cambridge University

The 1917 Balfour Declaration was a pivotal declaration of British support for a "national home for the Jewish people"

Completed in 1709, the library has more than 22,000 books.

You Can Spend the Night in the Secret Library Tucked Inside St. Paul's Cathedral

Airbnb is offering two guests the chance to sleep amongst 22,000 books in an area normally off-limits to visitors

Mining foreman R. Thornburg shows a small cage with a canary used for testing carbon monoxide gas in 1928.

What Happened to the Canary in the Coal Mine? The Story of How the Real-Life Animal Helper Became Just a Metaphor

The humble bird, which was employed until 1986, represents an important part of mining history

The shield has been withdrawn from an auction at Anderson & Garland, where it was expected to fetch between £800 and £1,200 (roughly $1,000 to $1,500). 

Auction House Cancels Sale of Looted Ethiopian Shield

Heritage officials have called for the return of the artifact, which British forces seized in 1868

The metal slab is called a tasset, a piece of armor worn over the upper thigh.

Why Did Colonists Trash This Piece of Armor After Settling in Maryland 300 Years Ago?

The metal plate was unearthed in the cellar of a storehouse dating to the mid-1600s

Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga, a fictionalized version of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, in FX's "Shogun"

The Real History Behind FX's 'Shogun'

A new adaptation offers a fresh take on James Clavell's 1975 novel, which fictionalizes the stories of English sailor William Adams, shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and Japanese noblewoman Hosokawa Gracia

The USS Jacob Jones, an American destroyer, sank off the southwest coast of England in December 1917.

Divers Recover Bell From Wreck of American Destroyer Sunk in World War I

Sixty-four American sailors died when a German torpedo hit the USS "Jacob Jones" on December 6, 1917

While the egg was found during excavations in 2010, researchers learned only recently that it still contains liquid.

Archaeologists Were 'Amazed' to Find That a 1,700-Year-Old Chicken Egg Still Has Liquid Inside

Discovered in England, the egg is thought to be the only one of its kind—and analysis of its contents could shed new light on its origins

The five-inch-long Bronze Age dress fastener may have once been worn by an "important person,"

Metal Detectorist Finds a Rare 3,000-Year-Old Dress Fastener

The gold accessory is one of only seven artifacts of this kind discovered in England and Wales

An image of an archaeologist excavating the wooden funerary bed and a reconstruction of the artifact (top right)

Archaeologists Discover Rare Roman Funerary Bed Buried Beneath London

The wooden bed was likely dismantled IKEA-style before being buried alongside a high-status individual

A visual reconstruction of the workshop, which was active near the start of Britain's Iron Age

Archaeologists Discover a 'High-End' Blacksmith's Iron Age Workshop

Found in Oxfordshire, the "smithy" was active at the beginning of a transformative era in Britain

A pair of illustrations from Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, which launched the sensation novel trend of the 1860s

The Sensation Novelist Who Exposed the Plight of Victorian Women

Wilkie Collins drew on his legal training to dramatize the inequality caused by outdated laws regarding marital and property rights

Churchill's custom-made dentures helped him maintain his distinctive speaking style.

Winston Churchill Wore False Teeth to Deliver Historic Wartime Speeches. Now, They're for Sale

The British prime minister likely acquired the custom gold-mounted dentures around the beginning of World War II

Callum Turner (left) as John "Bucky" Egan and Austin Butler (right) as Gale "Buck" Cleven in "Masters of the Air"

The Real History Behind 'Masters of the Air' and the 100th Bomb Group

The long-awaited follow-up to "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" centers on an American aerial group nicknamed the "Bloody Hundredth"

The envelope was sent twice: once on May 2, 1840, and again on May 4, 1840.

First Known Piece of Mail Sent Using a Stamp Goes to Auction

The 183-year-old envelope is a rare example of two early forms of prepaid postage: Mulready envelopes and adhesive stamps

Duncan Grant’s studio

This Museum Is Searching for Lost Artworks by Members of the Bloomsbury Group

The Charleston museum is launching a new initiative to acquire 50 privately owned works by 2030

Found by workers during recent restorations, the wall paintings feature three crowned motifs.

Forgotten Tudor Wall Paintings Discovered in a Cambridge University Loft Space

Unseen for nearly 300 years, the art resurfaced during restorations at Christ's College

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