Icebergs! Cannibals! Gold! All this--and animals and nature unlike anything seen before--drove adventurous men onto ships to explore new and forbidding lands and seas. Author Ali Scott explores it all in her new blog post.

Jane Austen's novels include an unusual number of characters with illusions of illness. Her own mother's hypochondria may have inspired their creation.

Coal was a messy but vital means of heating a Regency townhouse. The coal cellars and kitchens under those houses might be pricy flats today, but the coal-hole covers remain and tell quite a story.

The Royal Navy welcomed boys as young as nine and helped many to achieve great things, according to Emilia Stratford's new blog post.