The Gallimaufry

Where would the world be without the trusty post? The medium of many a crank, soppy poet and aggressive coupon chancers everywhere. We take a look at one of the longest running public mail systems, a national institution (quite literally), that enabled communications far and wide across Britain and beyond for half a century. It wasn't quite the world's first public system, but had some notable firsts including the postmar...

When we think of great Prime Ministers, Lord North is probably close to the bottom of the list. A corpulent and charismatic figure,  he led the British Government during the war of American Independence, a staggering defeat that finally knocked him out of office after 12 years in power (and after attempting to resign several times before he finally managed to...). Learn about the man and his motivations and whether history was righ...

Is it "fantastic?" A truly 21st century invention, although actually, plastics go back centuries and most modern plastics were actually discovered in the 19th century...however it certainly embodies the sprit of capitalist consumerism. From our soda bottles, to our clothes, plastic is everywhere, and has made our society possible. Find out the fascinating history of how it went from wonder material to villainous turtle ki...

The Great War has ended, thousands of citizens from across the colonies have answered the call of the Empire, but now the dust has settled, the troops are home, they are no longer welcome. Despite also existing as communities for centuries in Britain, Black and Arab people found themselves the target of racial violence and were told to "go home", as tempers flared ostensibly over jobs. Race riots that were never thought p...

Often called the Russian Lincoln, we take a look at the life of Alexander the 2nd of well...Russia. Thought of as too emotional and lazy by his peers, he certainly showed them! Known for emancipating the serfs and trying desperately to reform Russia against a rising tide of violent terrorism, Alexander ultimately fell to an assassin's bomb. In his life he managed to make seismic changes to Russia, but his death would go on to ...

Nowadays it's a given that the earth sits orbiting the sun, but not always! For centuries, in fact you could say not that long ago, we thought the earth was the centre of the universe. I mean why not? We're God's chosen or something right? So to make this a reality lots of people came up with complicated systems to explain it, that didn't really work, then thankfully Copernicus came along and said you're do...

Ah the life of a spy. Fast cars, strange gadgets, glamorous women and....er corpses. Well one corpse to be precise. Hear the unbelievable and outrageous tale of Operation Mincemeat, the successful plan to disguise the Invasion of Sicily from Adolf and his gang, all using a phoney set of orders planted on a soldiers body.  And it was basically lifted straight from a dodgy spy novel you could read in most bookshops, which apparently ...

Bones, broomsticks, japes and jack o' lanterns, Halloween is a day packed with fright and fun, but where did it all come from? Is it just another phoney day ripe for corporations to profit off? Or does it in fact have a long, rich and mildly complicated history stretching back centuries in the British and Irish isles? No clues there...Anyway join us on a spooky trip to where the night originally known as All Hallow's Eve ...

Hold your noses this one's going to be a whopper as we delve into the murky depths of the Victorian Thames, which handily doubled as a mass sewer for all the city's waste. This all changed on one fatefully hot summer in 1858 when boiling faeces forced Parliament to act before their nostrils exploded. They passed a bill in just 18 days to build thousands of miles of sewers, designed by Joseph Bazalgette, which are still in...

Years before a wall went up in Germany's capital, it took centre stage at the birth of the cold war. The city was in ruins, starving and subjected to the subjugation of its conquerors, but it was about to get a lot worse.

In 1948, following political squabbles gone array,  the Soviet blockade of Berlin began cutting off the city from the West. What followed was one of the most ambitious aid operations ever considered,...

The discovery of radio waves was a seismic event in scientific history, it opened a whole new range of communication possibilities....even if the many individuals across the world who researched and developed the concept couldn't actually see a use for their work. Thanks to their discoveries, you are able to happily turn on the radio every morning for your daily dose of banal chat and overhyped pop music. God bless those talen...