The history of Diwali: The five-day festival of light
The everchanging Festival of Light. Diwali is a five-day festival, and in 2024 it is celebrated between 30th October and 3rd November. Every year the dates of the festival change as the moon's position determines them. It usually falls between October and November. Each day of the festival has its own name and significance in which worshippers ...
Lily Ebert, Holocaust survivor and Tiktok star, dies aged 100
Lily Ebert, the Holocaust survivor who shared her experiences of Auschwitz on TikTok, has sadly died at the age of 100. Lily spent four months in Auschwitz before being sent to Germany where she was forced to work as a slave labourer in a munitions factory. She settled in Britain after the war and in recent years, with the help of her great ...
The 19 greatest mysteries in history | Sky HISTORY TV Channel
2. Skinwalker Ranch. Whilst the location of Curse of Skinwalker Ranch continues to mystify the modern world, the famous American ranch has a spooky history that dates back hundreds of years.. Although the sprawling ranch, situated in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah, was officially established back in the early 1930s, the land on which it was built is said to have been cursed since the 1800s.
Everything you need to know about Queen Elizabeth I
In October 1562, Elizabeth started to feel under the weather. What first appeared to be a common cold actually turned out to be a violent case of smallpox. The Queen was very ill, and at first, her advisors thought she might die. She survived, however, and managed to avoid any major scarring - a common after-effect of the sickness.
Baba Vanga: Which of her predictions came true? - Sky HISTORY
Baba Vanga: The Balkan Nostradamus who predicted Chernobyl and 9/11. Many years before, in 1969, Baba Vanga had a vision of Gandhi, saying 'The dress will destroy her. I see an orange-yellow dress in the smoke and fire.'. On the fateful day the bodyguards opened fire, Indira Gandhi was indeed wearing a saffron-hued saree.
The Filthy Few: 10 facts about the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club
The Hells Angels were founded in Fontana, California on 17th March 1948, not by the late Ralph ‘Sonny’ Berger as is often believed. The inception is usually credited to motorcycle enthusiast Otto Friedli though this has been disputed and denied by Friedli himself. Supposedly, Otto borrowed the name from Arvid Olsen, a former vet who’d ...
Mum, Mam, Mom: What do you call your mother? - Sky HISTORY
Before you ask, no, ‘father’ doesn’t make the prestigious list. According to The Oxford Dictionary, the modern word ‘mother’ is Germanic in origin. It derives from ‘moder’, which became ‘mutter’ in German and ‘mōdor’ in English. If we go further back the Germanic ‘moder’ comes from the Greek ‘mētēr’ (meaning ...
The biggest conspiracy theories in history
The Illuminati are the go-to villains of countless conspiracy theories. They are the ultimate ‘shadowy elite’, secretly installing world leaders, manipulating financial markets, and generally behaving like a sprawling network of Bond villains. The truth is rather more mundane, however. There was a real group known as the Illuminati, but ...
The real story of Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history
On 26th April 1986, a routine safety test went catastrophically wrong and triggered the worst nuclear accident of all time. The incident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine led to the release of 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WW2.. 31 people died in the immediate aftermath, whilst the long-term health effects caused by Chernobyl ...
How the Nazis lost WW2: Four major turning points
The failure of Operation Barbarossa. Though Hitler and Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact in 1939, that marriage of convenience was spectacularly annulled when the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. Stalin was stunned by the move, which opened up a 1,800-mile front and proved to be the biggest military operation in history.