China's Gang of Four were called to a meeting and arrested
On 6 October 1976, a month after Mao died, Hua Guofeng had Jiang Qing and three allies seized one by one. Their fall ended China's Cultural Revolution.
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History.
Past lives, surviving traces and the stories we choose to remember.
Britain's allotments owe their survival to a century of law
A 1908 duty on councils and a 1925 Act gave Britain's allotments legal cover. Here is how that cover held as plots fell from 1.4 million to 300,000.
Victorian spiritualism: the telegraph made seances plausible
Two girls in New York State claimed in 1848 to talk to a ghost. Science, and a new wire technology, helped the craze take root in Britain.
A Baltimore novelty firm sold Ouija as a Victorian family game
Baltimore's Kennard Novelty Company sold Ouija in 1890 to cash in on Spiritualism. The Exorcist, in 1973, turned a date-night toy into a feared object.
A Serbian village gave Europe the word 'vampire' in 1725
An Austrian official's report on a staked corpse in Kisiljevo put 'vampyri' into print. Overcrowded graves and village terror did the rest.
Posada gets credit for Mexico's Day of the Dead skeletons
A 1792 Mexican novel and its engraver, Francisco Agüera Bustamante, laid groundwork that Posada's satirical prints later made famous.
A Celtic fire festival and a Church feast made Halloween
Samhain marked summer's end in Celtic Ireland, and Church feasts on 1 and 2 November gave it the name Halloween. Here is what the sources can show.
Ten hanged at Lancaster in 1612 on a child's testimony
A refused request for pins led to the 1612 Pendle witch trials in England. The Guardian says a nine-year-old's evidence helped send ten people to the gallows.
Egypt's Mamluk rulers began as purchased slaves
Egypt's Mamluk sultans ruled from 1250 to 1517 after being bought as boys, freed and trained as cavalry. Having no family ties bound them to their masters.
Britain's 1911 Act made workers, employers and state pay
The National Insurance Act 1911 took a weekly levy from British wage-earners, employers and the state to fund sick pay and free doctor visits.
Diplomats in Berlin wrote the rules for seizing Africa
At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, European diplomats set the terms of colonisation with no African present, then settled many borders in later deals.
Rome's Praetorian Guard protected emperors and killed them
Guards stabbed Caligula, and the Guard eliminated Pertinax. In 193 AD Septimius Severus disbanded it and rebuilt it with his own men.
Offa's Dyke still shadows the border between England and Wales
A Mercian king raised an 80-mile bank and ditch after Welsh raids. The border still crosses it, and a 2022 survey found only 8.7% in good condition.
England's 1974 reform scrapped councils, not its old counties
The Local Government Act 1972 abolished England's old councils and named new areas counties. Yorkshire and Cumberland live on as historic counties.
How a botched press briefing opened the Berlin Wall in 1989
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. The BBC and National Geographic trace how a botched press briefing turned months of protest into an open border.
Six countries pooled coal and steel, and built the EU's machinery
The European Coal and Steel Community put French and German heavy industry under one authority in 1952. Its commission, court and assembly became the EU's.
Eritrean fighters took Asmara in 1991. The vote came two years on
Eritrea's 30-year war with Ethiopia ended when rebel fighters marched into Asmara on 24 May 1991. A UN-supervised referendum in 1993 made independence formal.
Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace may have helped spread the bomb
Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace speech called for an international atomic agency, set up in 1957. His reactor-sharing programme also gave Iran its start.
A pope's letter set Roger Bacon writing the Opus Majus
In 1266 Pope Clement IV asked a confined Franciscan friar for his writings. Roger Bacon had none, so he spent a year writing the Opus Majus.
Martin Luther King answered his critics in a letter from jail
In 1963, jailed in Birmingham, Martin Luther King answered eight white clergymen who had called his protests unwise and untimely.
Gerald Holtom drew the peace sign for the Aldermaston march
Gerald Holtom drew the peace symbol in 1958 for a nuclear disarmament march from London to Aldermaston, and it later spread across the world.
How the Black Death spread, and why medieval doctors missed it
BBC Bitesize and National Geographic explain how a bacterium on rat fleas killed a third to half of Europe. Doctors blamed the four humours and bad air.
De Gaulle was the hard-liners' hope. He let Algeria go
France called Algeria an integral part of the nation and fought from 1954 to keep it. The FLN won in 1962 by diplomacy, once de Gaulle negotiated peace.
Migrant workers built Brasília, Brazil's capital, in three years
A capital promised by Brazil's new republic in 1889 waited 67 years. Then Kubitschek, Costa, Niemeyer and 30,000 workers built Brasília in three.