Non-Fiction

A brief history of antibiotics from the days when people ate spiders’ webs for their antibiotic qualities to the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in the months before the Second World War. Antibiotics have changed medicine and made the world a much safer place but many diseases can now escape the effects of this wonder drug. (425 words).

Dr. Crippen’s name was well-known in Britain long after he was hanged for murdering his wife. But did he really do it? He behaved like a guilty man. He tried to run away to Canada with his lover and we know his wife was sleeping with other men. But when the body found at his home was examined by a research team, they claimed it was actually a man. (860 words)

Al-Biruni was a Muslim scholar who was born at the end of the 10th century and wrote over 140 books. He was interested in astrology, pharmacy, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, physics, mineralogy and languages. Read about his remarkable achievements and the world he lived in (1,330 words).

Every night we go to sleep and, in the morning, get up again. But we do not understand a lot about why we need sleep or what our bodies do when we are in bed. This story tells you something about sleep and the problems that happen when we do not sleep enough (830 words).

Johnannes Gutenberg changed the world. Before him, people copied books by hand. They wrote every word and started the page again if they made a mistake. Of course, books were very, very expensive and so nobody learnt to read. Gutenberg made a machine that made books cheap and easy to copy fast – very fast. This is his story (420 words)...

Martin Luther King is the only American with a national holiday for his birthday. But he was not a great soldier or president or businessman. He was black and fought for his people to have the same rights as whites. Read about his story here (830 words).

In 1945, the Second World War was coming to an end. The Germans stopped fighting in Europe and Hitler was dead. But, in the East, the Japanese preferred to die as soldiers. The Americans knew that many of their soldiers were going to die fighting. So, they dropped the first atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is the story of the hundreds of thousands that died (400 words).

For Lavoisier in revolutionary France and the religious socialist, Priestley, in England, science meant very different things. For the Frenchman who devised the metric system, it was about systematising our knowledge of the world. For the Englishman, it was all part of realising God’s great plan for us. The paths of the two men crossed but their beliefs were very different. (1,850 words)

Conan Doyle was an extraordinary man: he looked after his sick wife for many, many years and never touched his lady friend until his wife was dead. He investigated criminal cases, like his detective, Sherlock Holmes, where he thought there was injustice. He was an accomplished sportsman and he believed in fairies and dead spirits. (1580 words).

Rock and roll means many different things to people over the world. Although it might be difficult to define exactly what it is, one thing is sure: it changed the face of modern music. But it also changed the world. It was the first time that music was written for young people and tried to express their aims and feelings. Read about the history of rock and roll. (1,360 words)

Polo is a game that is thousands of years old. It probably came from Iran. The idea is to hit a ball with a long stick when you are riding a horse. In ancient times, it wasn’t a ball but the head of an enemy you had killed in wartime. The British made the game famous when they discovered it in India and many rich people still play today. But you must be rich because horses are not cheap (720 words).

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the greatest soldiers of the First World War, maybe the greatest. He defended his country against Churchill’s armies and won a terrible victory. But he was more than a soldier: he changed the face of modern Turkey. He gave women the vote; he changed the alphabet and Turkish language; and he made Turkey a secular country, not a religious one. This is his story (1,200 words)

One hundred years ago in Britain, women could not choose the government. They could not be politicians. Almost no woman had a job. This is the story of a brave woman who died because she wanted to give women chances in life. Read about Emily Davison (500 words).

Mohindas Gandhi fought all his life for Indians’ rights. But he was a man that fought with ideas. He never used a gun or a knife and he nearly died many times to stop others killing people. In the end, he got the British out of India and freedom for his country but he did not live to enjoy his country’s new rights. This is his story (1,070 words)

The French Revolution of 1789 changed the world. We all know the pictures of the guillotine, the machine that cut people’s heads off, but the Revolution also made Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who started a European war. It changed the way we think too – even today. This is the story of what happened in Paris in 1789 (400 words)