Dr Sam Willis

Did you know that the history of the beard is connected to the Crimean War; that the history of paperclips is all about the Stasi; and that the history of bubbles is all about the French Revolution? And who knew that Heinrich Himmler, Tutankhamun, and the history of needlework are linked to napalm and Victorian orphans? In Histories of the...

At Histories of the Unexpected, we believe that everything has a history—even the most unexpected of subjects—and that everything links together in unexpected ways. We believe that the history of the itch, the history of crawling, the history of clouds, or of lightning, or of zombies, or zebras, or holes, or perfume, or rubbish, or mustard—all have fascinating histories of...

At Histories of the Unexpected, we believe that everything has a history - even the most unexpected of subjects - and that everything links together in unexpected ways. We believe that the history of the itch, the history of crawling, the history of clouds, or of lightning or of zombies or zebras or holes or perfume or rubbish or mustard...

For the first time, Sam Willis offers a fascinating naval perspective to one of the greatest of all historical conundrums: How did thirteen isolated colonies, who, in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army, win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution was a naval war of immense...