Articles

Daily life in Colonial America was hard, and travel was dangerous. One could easily be robbed or killed by any number of outlaws or people simply driven to desperation by poverty. There was also the very good chance of being murdered for...

In 1846, graduates of West Point Military Academy were deployed to fight in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Less than 20 years later, many now wearing different uniforms, they would meet again as adversaries in the American Civil War...

The First World War (1914-18) has a close association with static trench warfare dominated by heavy artillery and machine guns, but the conflict witnessed many entirely new developments in weaponry as all sides desperately sought to outdo...

Colonial American history has many 'firsts' – Harvard University, the first institution of higher learning (1636), Bacon's Rebellion (1676), the first large-scale armed insurrection, the Stono Rebellion (1739), the first major slave revolt...

Superior weapons can win wars, and during the First World War (1914-18) all sides attempted to gain an advantage over the enemy by producing more and more destructive devices that could be used effectively on land, at sea, and in the air...

The Battle of Yellow Tavern (11 May 1864) was a pivotal engagement of the American Civil War (1861-1865), not so much for any grand strategic reason than for the loss of Major General J. E. B. Stuart, the famed Confederate cavalry commander...

The way Queen Victoria (reign 1837-1901) and her family celebrated their Christmases became familiar to the public over the years, thanks to the intense media coverage of the royal family, particularly the regular features in popular illustrated...

The Battle of Cold Harbor (31 May to 12 June 1864) was the final major engagement of the Overland Campaign, the large-scale Union offensive into Virginia in the final year of the American Civil War (1861-1865). It marked a devastating defeat...

Genetics is the study of how genes are transmitted across generations, which includes the genetic information that produces an individual's traits, physical characteristics, and diseases. This recent branch of biology has transformed medicine...

I was recently invited to an archaeological symposium at the site of AlUla in Saudi Arabia. I had known about AlUla since 2018 and seen photographs of the amazing Nabatean tombs from there. A conference was held at AlUla in 2023, but I was...