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A selection of historical conundrums answered by experts
What happened to Mata Hari’s head?
“One might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” goes the old proverb. The meaning is simple: if you are going to be punished for a small crime, you may as well commit the bigger one. In the early
In March 1457, a short, slight widow left Pembroke Castle to embark on a 100-mile journey across territories stalked by civil war and pestilence. Her husband had died only four months earlier, carried
Reins in hands, three young sisters ride the coils of an enormous blue snake. Waving a rattle and smiling happily, the fourth, a baby, is held around her plump middle by its tail. Passers-by dive out
IF YOU STROLL ACROSS THE GREEN SWATHE OF the Maidan in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) – past the monumental marble Victoria Memorial built to honour that Empress of India – and keep heading south, the ci
A quest to find Horace Walpole’s missing Ottoman dagger unveiled a story of 16th-century diplomacy, Victorian theatre and a notorious heist
A cyanotype of a fern leaf by early photographer Anna Atkins soared above its estimate in Surrey and ‘the most striking likeness’ of Horatio Nelson is drawing every eye at the LAPADA Fair