The Precise Story Behind Apple TV+’s ‘Blitz,’ a New Steve McQueen Movie About Britain’s Steadily World Warfare II Heroes
Elliot Heffernan (left) and Saoirse Ronan (acceptable) portray a mother and son in Steve McQueen’s new film, Blitz. Apple TV+ The Blitz began on September 7, 1940. Nearly every night…
How the Berlin Wall Became a 100-Mile Bike and Pedestrian Trail
Joe Baur Freelance travel writer It’s impossible to make out the tourists from the locals on a sunny Sunday afternoon at Mauerpark––the 37-acre linear green space formerly part of the…
This Russian Family Lived Alone in the Siberian Wilderness for 40 Years, Unaware of World War II or the Moon Landing
Mike Dash; Updated by Ellen Wexler Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a…
Divers in Mexico’s Underwater Caves Get a Glimpse of Rarely Seen Artifacts, Fossils and Human Remains
Martin Broen Freelance writer The underwater caves of the Yucatán Peninsula are a window to the distant past. Through two million years and over multiple glaciation cycles, these caves have…
How ‘Blackbirders’ Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders Into Slavery After the Civil War
Estimates of the number of Pacific Islanders captured by blackbirders and forced to work on cotton and sugar plantations in Fiji and Australia range from 61,610 to more than 100,000.…
The Ten Best History Books of 2024
Smithsonian‘s picks for the best history books of 2024 include The Barn, Eden Undone and The Wide Wide Sea. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz As the United States approaches the 250th…
The Real History Behind Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator II’ and Life as a Fighter in the Ancient Roman Arena
Meilan Solly Senior Associate Digital Editor, History To mark the opening of the Colosseum in 80 C.E., the Roman emperor Titus staged a staggering spectacle, flooding the arena with water…
The Real Story Behind the ‘Lee’ Movie and Lee Miller, the Legendary Surrealist Photographer and World War II Journalist Who Inspired It
Eli Wizevich History Correspondent When Antony Penrose was a young boy in postwar England, he knew his mother, Lee Miller, was a photographer. She taught him how to use her…
These Black Soldiers Fought for the British During the American Revolution in Exchange for Freedom From Slavery
For enslaved Black Americans living through the Revolutionary War, freedom sometimes meant donning the red coat of the enemy. Such was the case for the Carolina Corps, a military unit…
When the Nazis Seized Power, This Jewish Actor Took on the Role of His Life
On an evening in May 1934, a crowd filed into an auditorium in the port city of Szczecin, now in northwestern Poland. The city was then known as Stettin, and…