History for Kids
History tells the story of people who lived before us: the pharaohs of Egypt, the knights of the Middle Ages, the inventors of the modern world and the leaders who fought for fairness. These lessons bring the past to life with clear explanations, fun facts and quizzes.
All 124 History topics
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs for their pharaohs.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece gave us the first Olympic Games, democracy and great thinkers like Socrates and Aristotle.
The Romans
Rome built a huge empire with roads, aqueducts and the Colosseum.
Indus Valley Civilisation
Over 4,500 years ago, planned cities like Mohenjo-daro had drains, bricks and tidy streets in what is now Pakistan and India.
Medieval Knights
In the Middle Ages, knights in armour defended castles and served kings.
The Printing Press
In about 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press with movable type.
Great Explorers
Explorers like Columbus, Zheng He and Magellan sailed across oceans.
Industrial Revolution
Around 1760 in Britain, machines and steam engines began to make goods in factories.
The Space Race
In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite.
The Stone Age
In the Stone Age people made tools from stone, hunted animals and gathered plants.
The Bronze Age
Bronze is a mix of copper and tin that is stronger than stone.
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is called the cradle of civilisation.
Ancient China
Ancient China invented paper, silk, gunpowder, the compass and printing.
The Maya
The Maya lived in Central America and built stepped pyramids.
The Aztecs
The Aztec Empire in Mexico had a capital called Tenochtitlan, built on a lake with canals.
The Incas
The Inca Empire stretched along the Andes in South America.
The Vikings
Vikings were Norse sailors from Scandinavia who explored, traded and raided in longships.
Samurai of Japan
Samurai were skilled warriors in old Japan who followed a code of honour called bushido.
The Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire ruled much of India from 1526.
The Silk Road
The Silk Road was a network of trade routes linking China to Europe.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a time from about the 14th to 17th century when art, science and learning blossomed in Europe.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright who wrote plays like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.
Pirates
Pirates were sea robbers who attacked ships, especially in the 1600s and 1700s in the Caribbean.
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi led India's non-violent movement for independence from Britain, which succeeded in 1947.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for fighting against apartheid in South Africa.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th US president.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie discovered the elements polonium and radium and studied radioactivity.
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton (1642–1727) explained gravity and the laws of motion.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity, including the famous equation E = mc².
The Wright Brothers
In 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first powered, controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk.
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII was the last active ruler of ancient Egypt.
Life in Medieval Times
In the Middle Ages most people were peasants who farmed land for lords.
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall was built over many centuries to protect Chinese states from invaders from the north.
The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was a powerful state that lasted from about 1299 to 1922.
The Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the eastern part of the Roman Empire that survived for about a thousand years after the western half fell.
The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns between the 11th and 13th centuries, when European Christians tried to take the Holy Land…
The Black Death
The Black Death was a deadly plague that swept through Europe, Asia and North Africa in the 1300s.
The French Revolution
The French Revolution began in 1789 when ordinary people rose up against unfair rule and privilege.
The American Revolution
The American Revolution was a war between Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in North America.
The Boston Tea Party
In 1773, American colonists dumped crates of British tea into Boston Harbor to protest against a tax.
Queen Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 to 1603.
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was a teenage French peasant who believed she was guided by visions.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who sailed across the Atlantic in 1492 while working for Spain.
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish expedition that sailed around the world between 1519 and 1522.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance artist, inventor and scientist.
Galileo Galilei
Galileo was an Italian scientist who used telescopes to study the sky.
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician who wrote notes about a machine that could follow instructions.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and then made many dangerous trips back to help others escape on the Underground Railroad.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist who refused to give up her bus seat in 1955.
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart was an American pilot who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932.
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was a British nurse who improved hospital care during the Crimean War.
Hammurabi
Hammurabi was a king of Babylon who created one of the earliest known sets of written laws.
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who became king as a child.
The Pyramids of Giza
The Pyramids of Giza were built as tombs for Egyptian pharaohs about 4,500 years ago.
The Trojan War
In Greek legend, the Trojan War was a long conflict between the Greeks and the city of Troy.
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great became king of Macedon at 20 and built a huge empire that stretched from Greece to parts of India.
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman who played a key role in the end of the Roman Republic.
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan united the nomadic tribes of Mongolia and founded the Mongol Empire in the early 1200s.
The Moon Landing
On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon.
The Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to divide East and West Berlin during the Cold War.
World War II
World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945 and involved many countries around the world.
The Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty ruled China from 1368 to 1644.
Ancient Persia
Ancient Persia was a vast empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to India.
Ancient Rome's Colosseum
The Colosseum was a huge stadium in Rome where crowds watched gladiator fights, animal hunts and shows.
The Ancient Olympics
The first Olympic Games were held in Olympia, Greece, more than 2,000 years ago.
Viking Longships
Viking longships were long, narrow boats with a shallow hull.
Anne Frank
Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl who wrote a diary while hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II.
The Invention of Money
Long ago people traded goods, like grain for tools.
Pharaohs of Egypt
Pharaohs were the kings and queens of ancient Egypt.
The Great Fire of London
In 1666 a fire started in a bakery and spread across London for several days.
The Titanic
The Titanic was a huge passenger ship that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its first voyage.
The Tudors
The Tudors were a royal family who ruled England from 1485 to 1603.
The Gold Rush
During the Gold Rush, many people travelled to places like California and the Klondike, hoping to find gold.
The Suffragettes
In the early 1900s, the suffragettes campaigned for women to be given the right to vote.
The Mayflower
The Mayflower was a ship that carried a group of English settlers to America in 1620.
The Bayeux Tapestry
The Bayeux Tapestry is a long embroidered cloth that tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a famous ring of huge standing stones in England.
Ancient Sparta
Sparta was a powerful city-state in ancient Greece known for its strong army and tough training for boys.
The Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War was a long conflict between England and France from 1337 to 1453.
The Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal is a white marble tomb in Agra, India, built by Emperor Shah Jahan.
The Berlin Airlift
During the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949, planes flew food and supplies into West Berlin when roads were blocked.
The Spanish Armada
In 1588, a large Spanish fleet tried to invade England, but storms and smaller English ships helped defeat it.
Ancient Sumer
Sumer was one of the first civilisations, in what is now southern Iraq.
The Pony Express
The Pony Express was a mail service in the United States in 1860 and 1861.
Ancient Japan
Ancient Japan had early communities that farmed rice and made pottery.
The Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement was a fight in the United States for equal rights for Black Americans, including the right to vote and to be…
The Medieval Castle Siege
A siege was a military blockade of a castle or city.
The Phoenicians
The Phoenicians were skilled sailors and traders who lived on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean.
Ancient Greek Theatre
Ancient Greek theatre took place in open-air arenas and featured actors wearing masks.
Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
Ordinary people in ancient Egypt farmed along the Nile, made bread and beer, and worked as builders and craftspeople.
The Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was a group of merchant towns in northern Europe that worked together to trade goods such as timber, fish and grain.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe economic downturn in the 1930s, when many people lost their jobs and savings.
The Wars of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses were a series of civil wars in England between two royal houses, the Lancasters and the Yorks.
The Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Lighthouse of Alexandria was built on an island off the coast of Egypt around 2,300 years ago.
The Hittites
The Hittites were an ancient people who lived in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey.
The Olmecs
The Olmecs were one of the first major civilisations in Mesoamerica, living in what is now southern Mexico.
The Great Library of Alexandria
The Great Library of Alexandria was one of the largest libraries of the ancient world, holding scrolls from many countries.
Ancient Carthage
Carthage was a powerful city-state in North Africa, near modern Tunis.
The Zulu Kingdom
The Zulu Kingdom was a powerful kingdom in southern Africa in the 1800s.
The Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is a human-made waterway that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The Meiji Restoration
The Meiji Restoration in the 1860s brought great change to Japan, ending centuries of rule by shoguns and opening the country to new ideas…
Ancient Assyria
Assyria was a powerful ancient civilisation in northern Mesopotamia.
The Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty ruled China from 618 to 907 and is often seen as a golden age of Chinese culture.
The Crimean War
The Crimean War was fought from 1853 to 1856 between Russia and an alliance of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire.
The Forbidden City
The Forbidden City is a huge palace complex in Beijing, China, that was home to emperors for almost 500 years.
Easter Island
Easter Island is a remote island in the Pacific Ocean famous for its giant stone statues called moai.
Ancient Nubia
Nubia was an ancient region along the Nile south of Egypt.
The Hanging Gardens
The Hanging Gardens were a famous set of terraced gardens said to have been built in ancient Babylon.
The Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire was the largest land empire in history, founded by Genghis Khan in the early 1200s.
The Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty ruled China from 1644 to 1912 and was the last imperial dynasty of China.
The Ancient Egyptian Calendar
The ancient Egyptians used a calendar of 365 days, divided into 12 months of 30 days with five extra days at the end.
The Viking Runes
Runes are letters used by the Vikings and other Germanic peoples to write messages on stone, wood and metal.
The Great Plague of London
The Great Plague of London in 1665 killed tens of thousands of people in the city.
The Roman Roads
The Romans built thousands of kilometres of straight, durable roads across their empire.
The Mughal Gardens
Mughal gardens are formal gardens built during the Mughal Empire in India.
The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a huge copper statue in New York Harbor that was a gift from France to the United States.
The Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge in San Francisco, California, opened in 1937.
The Colossus of Rhodes
The Colossus of Rhodes was a huge bronze statue of the Greek sun god Helios, built on the island of Rhodes around 2,300 years ago.
The Terracotta Army
The Terracotta Army is a huge collection of clay soldiers, horses and chariots buried near the tomb of the first Emperor of China.
The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stone slab with the same text written in three scripts.
The Great Fire of Rome
The Great Fire of Rome burned for several days in 64 CE and destroyed large parts of the city.
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period in the 1930s when strong winds blew away topsoil from farms in the United States and Canada.
The Women's Land Army
The Women's Land Army was a group of women who worked on farms during the World Wars to grow food when many men were serving in the armed…
Frequently asked questions about History
Why should children learn history?
History helps us understand why the world is the way it is today, and it teaches us about people, cultures and choices that shaped our lives.
How do historians know what happened in the past?
They study evidence such as objects, buildings, letters, photographs, coins and written records, and they compare different sources.
What is the difference between BC and AD?
BC means "before Christ" and counts years backwards before year 1. AD stands for "anno Domini" and counts years forward from year 1.