History

Published: 12 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online A newly identified Roman military fort in Pembrokeshire, Wales, could provide important archaeological evidence behind a medieval Welsh legend involving the fourth-century emperor Magnus Maximus. The discovery of Roman coins, pottery, tiles and military structures near Frenni Fawr hill has raised the possibility that a traditional story preserved for centuries may have been rooted in historical events rather...

Published: 12 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online A decades-old wedding album discovered abandoned outside a café in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, has been returned to the family after an online appeal and determined research by a local historian uncovered its remarkable story. The photographs, taken at a wedding in 1957, belonged to Maxwell Dawson and Barbara Parr and were among the few surviving images of the...

Published: 06 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online More than eight decades after the end of the Second World War, unexploded German bombs continue to pose a dangerous and unpredictable threat across Britain, forcing specialist military teams to confront weapons that have spent generations buried underground or hidden beneath the country’s waterways. The scale of the continuing problem was starkly illustrated on 14 January 2026, when...

Published: 05 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online. People who served Egypt’s earliest kings may have been deliberately killed and buried alongside their rulers as part of ancient funerary rituals, new archaeological research suggests. The study, based on injuries found on the skulls of individuals buried near royal tombs, has revived a debate that has continued for more than a century over whether human sacrifice was...

Published: 02 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online A mural depicting ancient Egyptian figures Tutankhamun and Nefertiti with noticeably dark complexions has triggered a heated public debate in Cairo, highlighting long-running disagreements over the appearance, ancestry and ethnic diversity of ancient Egyptians. The 66-metre-long artwork had been created in Tahrir Square as part of a wider effort to beautify the Egyptian capital ahead of Chinese President...

Published: 26 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Diplomatic gifts can be much more than ceremonial objects exchanged between political leaders. They can represent friendship, historical memory, cultural identity, strategic interests and, at times, carefully calculated political messages. From France’s monumental Statue of Liberty to China’s famous tradition of giving giant pandas, gifts exchanged between nations have long been used to communicate ideas that may extend...

Published: 26 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III has delivered a forceful defence of the institution’s role in documenting American history, telling an audience in Washington that confronting difficult chapters of the past is not an act of disloyalty but an essential part of understanding the country. Bunch, who is due to retire from the Smithsonian at the end of...

Published: 23 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online. Archaeological discoveries beneath Bath Assembly Rooms have opened a rare window into everyday life in Roman-era Bath, revealing evidence of ordinary residents who lived beyond the city’s celebrated baths and monumental centre. The unexpected finds were uncovered during restoration work at the historic Georgian building and include pottery, coins, glassware, animal bones, roof tiles and a fragment of...

Published: 22 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online. Nearly four million records documenting the lives of enslaved people across 20 former British colonies have become searchable online, creating a new opportunity for descendants of enslaved communities to investigate family histories that have remained difficult to trace for generations. The collection contains about 300,000 pages of historical records covering enslaved people in former British colonial territories between...

Published: 16 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online. New historical research has found that wealth generated through the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of Africans was deeply connected to Britain’s financial system, including the early development of the Bank of England and other major financial institutions. The research, compiled through the Register of British Slave Traders, suggests that the involvement of financial institutions and prominent financiers in...