history editor

Mad as a March hare: if you’re feeling like that after the long cold February we’ve endured, find out what extraordinary days this month has engendered. It’s mostly famous as the home of the “Ides” which did for Julius Caesar. What are the…

Big Jim Larkin is usually remembered one dimensionally, as a great trade unionist with a simple message of solidarity, solidarity, solidarity. But Larkin had plenty of ideas on other questions, from nationalism in Ireland to gangsters in…

As if it weren't a busy enough month already, what with partying, buying presents, meeting up with old mates, thinking of excuses to avoid tedious familial gatherings ... there's so much history in December! Here's the first of Headstuff's…

The truth is a strange beast, and often the best that history can do is simply tell you what is likely to be true rather than give a definitive answer. Elizabeth Báthory is a good example of this. She is painted by some historians as…

Sometimes looking into history is like being both short and long-sighted. Things far away are hazy, of course. Our sole source for a lot of early British traditions, for example, is the writings of the Romans who were conquering them. But…

The woman who would become famous as Mata Hari, the “Eye of the Dawn”, was born in 1876 as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. Her parents, Adam and Antje, were middle-class but prosperous Dutch people, living in Leeuwarden. Her father had a hat…

Albert Bacon Fall was born in 1861 to a poor family in Kentucky. His early schooling was patchy at best, and non-existent at worst, as he was forced to work in the local cotton processing factory to support his family. This damaged his…

There is a booklet written for the British Armed Forces in World War 2 called “All-In Fighting”. It’s perhaps best described as a manual on methods to effectively kill someone else before they can kill you, given in a blunt and…

Joseph Vacher, possibly the most infamous French serial killer, was born in 1869 to a poor farming family in an Alpine valley in southwest France. He was the youngest of fifteen children, and little is known of his early life. What is…

Only one Vice President of the USA ever killed a man while in office. Only one ex-Vice President of the USA was ever tried for treason. Aaron Burr was so divisive a figure that after his vice presidency was ended the rules were changed…