Q&a

‘Green sickness’, also known as the ‘disease of virgins’ – a diagnosis applied mainly to teenage girls from the 16th to the 19th centuries – is one of the most puzzling conditions in the history of me

It sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories or a disaster movie: a series of volcanic eruptions kicks off a deadly pandemic. But new research suggests that such an event may indeed have happened.

A HUNDRED YEARS ago on 26 January 1926, in an attic room in London’s Soho (more famous for ladies of the night than technological breakthroughs), a Scottish engineer gave the first public display of p

I magine you’re in Nebraska, standing on North America’s Great Plains, where the broad Platte and Missouri rivers join on their way to the mighty Mississippi. It’s 1804, and in the blistering 36°C hea

RAIL Columnist

“Welcome to the 19th century,” began Jeremy Harte, introducing the Folklore Society’s Legendary Weekend examining ‘Lying in Legend and Tradition’. Gathering at Carlisle’s Tullie House Museum over 6-7