Steam Engine: Did you mean...?

WWI saw the birth of an entirely new form of combat: lone men engaging the enemy in aerial dogfights. The victors became heroes back home, but this was as deadly an occupation as it was an exhilarating one. One bullet, an engine or structural...

With thousands of square feet of canvas capturing every breath of the trade winds, a 19th-century tea clipper was the absolute pinnacle of sailing evolution. The Cutty Sark was just such a ship, carrying tea and then wool across the far-flung...

The production of steel during the British Industrial Revolution became cheaper and more reliable thanks to the Bessemer converter, a type of blast furnace that removed undesirable impurities from pig iron. The superior strength and durability...

The Scientific Revolution (1500-1700), which occurred first in Europe before spreading worldwide, witnessed a new approach to knowledge gathering – the scientific method – which utilised new technologies like the telescope to observe, measure...

The U-boat, short for Unterseeboot (undersea boat), was the name for submarines used by the German Navy during the First World War (1914-18) and Second World War (1939-45). In the two Battles of the Atlantic, U-boats sank thousands of ships...

Assyria began as a small trading community centered at the ancient city of Ashur and grew to become the greatest empire in the ancient world prior to the conquests of Alexander the Great and, after him, the Roman Empire. While the Assyrians'...

The Battle of Britain, dated 10 July to 31 October, 1940 by the UK Air Ministry, was an air battle between the German Luftwaffe and British Royal Air Force and allies during the Second World War (1939-45). The Luftwaffe failed to achieve...

George III of Great Britain (r. 1760-1820) was the third of the Hanoverian monarchs, and he remains the longest-reigning king in British history. His six decades on the throne saw the creation of the United Kingdom, the loss of the 13 American...

Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. A leading figure of the Scientific Revolution, Huygens combined research into mathematical-based theories, such as the movement of light waves, with practical...

Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was an English scientist, architect, and natural philosopher who became a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. Hooke conducted his scientific experiments outside the auspices of universities, and he was a great...