Throughout History

05/08/2026

On the morning of 6 June 1944, two simple words crackled over the radio: “Ham” and “Jam.”

They weren’t a breakfast order. They were confirmation that Major John Howard’s glider troops had captured the bridges over the Caen Canal and the River Orne intact — “Ham” for the canal bridge, later renamed Pegasus Bridge, and “Jam” for the river bridge.

These two decisive operations were won within 90 minutes of landing, in the very first hours of D-Day, and kept the invasion’s eastern flank secure while the beach landings began.

A small codeword, a huge moment in history.

www.throughouthistory.co.uk

04/08/2026

How much of your time goes on planning lessons...?

Every course at Throughout History follows the Edexcel GCSE History specification and is built around the textbooks, so instead of piecing together your own resources, you gain access to a ready-to-go curriculum for teaching, revision and home study, whenever you need it.

We don't just provide slides with the odd video bolted on, every one of our lessons are supported by broadcast quality footage, along with fully researched and detailed revision guides.

And it's not just less on your plate. Teachers tell us that our focused lessons make their students feel less overwhelmed, more confident and more engaged, giving you one less thing to chase before their exams.

School subscriptions start from just £299 a year, and cover every student in year 10 and 11, and every member of your teaching staff.

If you'd like see samples of our resources, you can visit our website to watch three free videos from each of our available courses at:

www.ThroughoutHistory.co.uk/gcse-history-revision

If you have any questions or you'd like a free 30 day pass to see all of our resources before making any decisions, comment below or send me a direct message.

I'm always happy to help.

03/08/2026

On the 3rd of August 1948, a Time magazine editor named Whittaker Chambers sat before Congress and accused a senior State Department official, Alger Hiss, of once being a Soviet spy.

It’s often overshadowed by the Cold War’s bigger set pieces — Berlin, Cuba, the Wall — but the Hiss case did as much as anything to fuel the anti-Communist panic that defined 1950s America.

Hiss denied it under oath and was later convicted of perjury; a young congressman on the committee that questioned him, Richard Nixon, built his early career on the case.

Decades later, declassified Soviet paperwork suggested that Chambers had been telling the truth all along.

A reminder that some of the Cold War’s most consequential moments played out not in revolutions, but in committee rooms.

www.ThroughoutHistory.co.uk

31/07/2026

New from Throughout History: The Withdrawal Begins.

This excerpt is from our latest course covering the Vietnam War, and forms a part of the Edexcel GCSE History collection. It picks up at one of the more overlooked turning points: the start of US troop withdrawal, when a war that had escalated for years began, slowly and unevenly, to wind down.

Like every Throughout History course, it's created using broadcast-quality footage, built to match the Edexcel specification, and designed to work equally well in the classroom or for independent revision.

If you teach Edexcel GCSE History, school subscriptions start from just £299 a year and cover every student and teacher across Years 10 and 11.

If you'd like to see more free samples from our courses, click the link below to discover how we can help your students to achieve their academic goals.

https://www.throughouthistory.co.uk/gcse-history-revision

29/07/2026

On the 29th of July 1921, Adolf Hi**er became leader of the NSDAP. He'd joined the party two years earlier, when it was a small, unremarkable group of Munich nationalists still called the German Workers' Party.

What set Hi**er apart was his skill as an orator and his grip on propaganda, and by the summer of 1921 he knew it.

When a rival faction tried to sideline him, he resigned in protest, then agreed to come back only if he was handed near total control of the party. The committee caved, and from that day, the NSDAP was shaped around one man, not a shared political vision.

It's a small, procedural moment, but it marks the point at which a fringe party turned into a personality cult, and where the Weimar and N**i Germany story really starts to build towards 1933.

28/07/2026

On this day in 1866, 18 year old Vinnie Ream made history. Congress awarded her a commission to sculpt a statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Capitol rotunda — making her the first woman, and the youngest artist of either s*x, ever to receive a US government commission for a statue.

Ream had sketched Lincoln from life in his final months, sitting with him for around half an hour a day over five months. Her marble Lincoln still stands in the Capitol today, a reminder that talent doesn't wait for permission.

A brilliant story for anyone teaching or studying Reconstruction-era America, or the wider history of women breaking into professions that were long closed to them.

22/07/2026

On this day in 1951, two Soviet stray dogs quietly made history. Dezik and Tsygan were launched from Kapustin Yar aboard an R-1 rocket on a suborbital flight, reaching an altitude of 110 kilometres and around four minutes of weightlessness before parachuting safely back to Earth.

Their fifteen-minute journey made them the first mammals known to survive spaceflight, six years before Sputnik and Laika’s famous orbital mission.

Tsygan went on to retire as a much-loved pet, but sadly Dezik was killed on a second flight just weeks later when the parachute failed to deploy.

It’s a small, brave story that sits right at the start of the Space Race, and it’s exactly the kind of detail that brings the Cold War to life for GCSE students.

21/07/2026

Lesson planning eats into evenings and weekends more than any of us would like — especially when you're trying to find resources that actually match the spec.

Throughout History does the heavy lifting for you. Every course is a full set of broadcast quality video lessons, built around the Edexcel GCSE History textbooks, so you can plan a scheme of work straight from what's already there rather than piecing together your own materials from scratch. Use a lesson to introduce a topic, set it for homework, or point students to it for revision — the structure is already done.

As one Head of History put it: "Now every teacher and pupil has instant access to high-quality revision materials. It's become an essential part of our teaching toolkit."

School subscriptions start from £299 a year for the whole of Years 10 and 11, including every member of teaching staff.

Curious what a lesson looks like? Take a look at www.ThroughoutHistory.co.uk, or drop me a line at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Comprehensive history courses designed to empower students with the subject knowledge needed to achieve their potential with engaging videos and detailed notes.

21/07/2026

Our list of available courses is always growing, with new materials published regularly.

We currently have all of these full courses available:

- Civil Rights in the United States
- The Vietnam War
- Elizabethan England
- Crime & Punishment
- The Cold War

Our next course which focuses on Weimar & N**i Germany is already in production and will be available for you to use this September.

Check out our website to view free samples of our resources and discover how we can help your students achieve their academic goals.

www.ThroughoutHistory.co.uk

17/07/2026

On the night of the 17th July 1918, in a cellar in Yekaterinburg, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their five children were shot by Bolshevik revolutionaries. Acting on the orders of local officials, it brought over three hundred years of Romanov rule to a brutal, sudden end.

Nicholas had abdicated the year before, as war, food shortages and growing unrest pushed Russia towards revolution.

The family spent their final months under guard, moved from their palace outside Petrograd to Siberia and finally to the Urals, as civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks and their opponents.

Fearing Nicholas could become a rallying point for anti-Bolshevik forces advancing on the city, their captors decided the entire family, along with four loyal servants, had to die.

It remains one of the most chilling moments of the Russian Revolution, and a reminder of how quickly a dynasty that spanned three centuries can fall.