In the early 1900s, pushball had Harvard, the British military, and crowds of thousands in its grip. A six-foot ball, two teams, and thirty years of glorious chaos. The full story.

In 1757, a servant named Damiens stabbed Louis XV with a penknife. The wound was 1cm deep. His execution lasted all day. The last quartering in French history.

Born in Copenhagen, crowned Miss Denmark, and photographed by Peter Gowland for Playboy's September 1956 centrefold. Elsa Sørensen led two parallel careers under two different names, and hardly anyone noticed.

Jean Harlow was Hollywood's first platinum blonde bombshell. Behind the glamour was a domineering mother, three troubled marriages, a husband's suspicious death, and a body quietly failing at 26.

: The story of Juan Romero, the 17-year-old busboy who cradled dying Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. How he lived with guilt for 50 years and eventually found peace.

Alfred Cheney Johnston turned the Ziegfeld Follies girls into photographic legends. Discover the story of the photographer behind the most iconic showgirl portraits of the 1920s and 30s.

On 6 October 1976, Thai police and right-wing militias massacred unarmed students at Thammasat University in Bangkok. Here's the full story of what happened, and why it's been silenced ever since.

She replaced Marilyn Monroe on a Bob Hope tour, waded into the Trevi Fountain in a black gown, and made Playboy before she made film history. This is Anita Ekberg.

From Broadway to Playboy centrefolds, Jayne Mansfield weaponised her curves and owned every room she walked into. Here's the story of the boldest blonde in Hollywood.

John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary of 1865 documented nearly 10,000 words used by Victorian London's criminals, costermongers, students, and MPs. Here's the story behind it.

Born into poverty, Kiki de Montparnasse became the most famous model in 1920s Paris and posed for the most expensive photograph ever sold. Here's who she really was.

Amedeo Modigliani lived fast, painted brilliantly, and died at 35. Here's the story of the man behind those haunting elongated nudes that still captivate the art world today.

Long before Martin Scorsese cast them as screen enemies, Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent were bandmates in a New Jersey lounge act called the Aristocrats. Here's the story.

Steve McQueen wasn't supposed to be in it. Faye Dunaway was the second choice. And the most famous scene had no script. The full story of how The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) got made.

For 13 years, Akku Yadav terrorised a Nagpur slum with rape, murder and extortion while police looked the other way. In 2004, 200 women took justice into their own hands.

In 1957, Gordon Parks spent six weeks photographing crime across America for Life magazine. The editors published 12 of his 300 photographs. The rest told a very different story.

Marcel Petiot posed as a Resistance doctor offering escape from Nazi-occupied Paris. Instead he lured Jewish refugees to his murder house on Rue Le Sueur and killed them for their money.

In June 1962, photographer Bert Stern shot Marilyn Monroe across two separate sessions at the Hotel Bel-Air for Vogue. Six weeks later, she was dead. The story behind The Last Sitting.

During World War II, American troops collected skulls, teeth, and bones from Japanese war dead as trophies. Here's the disturbing history of how it happened, and why it was allowed.

Les Apaches were Paris's most feared and most fashionable criminal subculture, from around 1900 to WWI. Here's the full story of who they were, how they operated, and why they're still remembered.

Known as Casque d'Or, Amélie Élie was a Parisian gigolette whose love life sparked a bloody feud between two of the city's most feared Apache gangs, made her a media sensation, and eventually inspired a celebrated 1952 film.

Before Easy Rider made him famous, Dennis Hopper spent six years shooting everyone from Andy Warhol to Martin Luther King Jr. His photographs from 1961 to 1967 are some of the most candid documents of 1960s America ever taken.

Jimmy Savile abused at least 500 victims over five decades, from BBC studios to NHS wards to a secure psychiatric hospital. This is how he did it, and how so many people let it happen.