The Elephants of War

Each Lady Day, the Hampshire village of Tichborne hands out bags of flour to the locals - a tradition that began on 25th March, 1150 after Lady Marbella Tichborne, on her death-bed, suggested distributing a ‘Tichborne Dole’ to the needy. It’s far from the only quaint charity even ...  Show more

The first international women’s sports event, The Women’s Olympiad, kicked off in Monte Carlo on 24th March, 1921. A hundred athletes from five nations competed in track and field events, defying the male-dominated Olympic movement that excluded women from all sports except tenni ...  Show more

Asian elephants have been captured and tamed by people in Southern Asia for thousands of years as war machines, beasts of burden, and part of religious festivals. It’s a practice that continues to this day, but some activists are beginning to rethink its impact on this endangered ...  Show more

This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and cruelty against animals.

The Romans were - and still are - infamous for the brutal gladiatorial contests they held in their ancient amphitheatres. But often what made their games so spectacular were ...

Towards the beginning of the Second Punic War on 21 June 217 BC, a Carthaginian force under Hannibal launched a vicious ambush on a Roman army commanded by Gaius Flaminius.

The resulting battle, at Lake Trasimene in Italy, saw a complete capitulation of the Roman for ...

In the Middle Ages, animals were often the means for survival and the source of great wealth. No wonder then that in the medieval imagination, animals are not just animals. Animals were thought to have traits and characteristics that meant that they could be sorted i ...