Utterly interesting

On 14th February, 1779, Captain James Cook, one of Britain’s most celebrated navigators, was killed at Kealakekua Bay in the Hawaiian Kingdom. He was fifty years old. By the time of his death, Cook had already transformed European understanding of the Pacific Ocean, charting vast stretches of coastline and producing maps of remarkable accuracy. Yet his final encounter in Hawaii exposed the fragile and often volatile nature of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous soc

In 1942 at Fort Meade, the slight and scholarly Francois d’Eliscu ordered Rangers to charge him with fixed bayonets. Seconds later they were disarmed and pinned with a simple sash cord. Rejecting sporting rules, he taught ruthless, practical hand to hand combat that reshaped American military training during the Second World War.

Peter Basch fled Nazi Germany and went on to photograph the faces of mid century America. From fashion magazines to Hollywood portraits, his polished studio work helped define an era of glamour that still feels timeless today. A quieter name, but an important one.

During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent were removed from the United States in a campaign now known as the Mexican Repatriation. These stark photographs reveal the human reality behind the immigration raids of the 1930s.

On 12th February, 1993, a disappearance in a Merseyside shopping centre became one of Britain’s most consequential criminal cases. This in depth article examines the murder of Jamie Bulger and the legal and social questions that followed.

In the 1960s, a Chicago bellhop claimed he could project images from his mind onto Polaroid film. Psychiatrists believed him. Magicians called it a trick. The strange case of Ted Serios still raises questions about belief, evidence and illusion.