Switzerland's 15th-Century farmers and vintners had a dangerously creative solution to irrigating their mountainous land that's still in use today.

With the approval of the government, a renowned sexologist ran a dangerous program. How could this happen?

Scholars have investigated the issue for centuries, but many questions persist.

HBO’s Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage focuses on infamous music festival

The long read: In 2003, the destruction of one particular statue in Baghdad made worldwide headlines and came to be a symbol of western victory in Iraq. But there was so much more to it – or rather, so much less

Say what you want about Soviet technology, but you’ve got to admit there was a certain style to Cold War-era electronics

A statuette from the John Huston–Humphrey Bogart classic The Maltese Falcon is one of the most recognizable, and sought-after, pieces of movie memorabilia in history.

With the arrival of American soldiers in Calcutta, a short but fascinating period of cultural exchange emerged. American food, drinks, music, magazines and cinema soon found an enthusiastic consumer in the city.

The long read: The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom

With 300 decadent recipes, a relentless priest united regional dialects and preserved a common tongue.

Author revisits troubled history of Filipino tribe brought to America in 1905.

The long read: The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom

Alexei Stakhanov, who managed to extract 102 tonnes of coal in a single shift, started a trend that still holds sway in the workplaces of today.

A record-breaking Soviet miner from 1935 embodied a system of values that is central to contemporary work cultures today.

The discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the Marieval Indian Residential School is the latest in Canada’s grim tally.

The later moon missions didn’t grab as much attention as the first landing in 1969, but they had something very cool on the gear front: the lunar rover, a lightweight go-kart that gave crews unmatched mobility on another world

Mummy exhibits are big draws for museums, but curators are grappling with issues of cultural and racial sensitivity.

Forests of Judean date palm trees once covered ancient Israel, from Lake Galilee to the Dead Sea. The fruit of the tree symbolised life and prosperity and was praised in ancient literature for its unique medicinal properties. But the dates of Judea were made extinct by the Middle Ages. Now a team of scientists has succeeded in resurrecting the ancient tree.

Admired by everyone from John Milton to Nick Cave, The Anatomy of Melancholy has always been a text that has dazzled and confounded its readers in equal measure. Now, exactly 400 years after it was published, an academic has painstakingly traced the meaning of thousands of its sphinxlike allusions, enigmatic references and arcane quotations, allowing Robert Burton’s famous text to be fully understood for the very first time.

Rediscovered papers thought to record the memories of a longstanding friend say the ‘father of liberalism’ plagiarised and lied about never reading Thomas Hobbes