The Great Pyramid of Giza remains a favorite. The only remaining location from the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it's been around since about 2560 BCE, and for thousands of years was thought to have three chambers: the Queen's Chamber, the Grand Gallery, and the King's Chamber.
Read More
As the Jerusalem Post describes, what began as a foray into a rat-filled storage room in the museum led to the discovery of boxes that hadn't been opened since the 1970s. They were full of newspaper and plastic bags, and wrapped within them: over 300 ancient Phoenician figurines.
Read More
Cleopatra was fond of learning in general. She studied several disciplines, including geography, history, astronomy, medicine, and economics. She was also fairly comfortable embracing Egyptian culture.
Read More
For the third time, the German army tried to take Osoweic Fortress, a Russian stronghold near the border. After 10 days, the wind had turned, blowing from the German position over the Russian defenses, making the situation perfect for one of the deadliest innovations of the war: chlorine gas.
Read More
Capone was estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of at least 33 people, according to a contemporary report in the Chicago Herald Tribune. What sort of death does such a figure as Al Capone deserve? Whatever you think, the story of his final days is a deeply unfortunate one.
Read More
The situation around the Circleville poison pen letters eventually turned from terrifying to deadly. What's even scarier, the Circleville letter writer may still be out there. The Circleville letter writer sent poison pen letters to multiple residents of the small town, accusing them of misdeeds.
Read More
The Codex Gigas. No, this isn't the name of a companion piece to the Necronomicon, or the sacred tome for a race of cosmic necromancers from Warhammer 40k.
Read More
Chief Blackbird was a notorious leader who spearheaded the cause of the Omaha Native American Indian tribe in the 18th century. But the way he was buried was timeless.
Read More
The Bonus Army was a protest held by as many as 25,000 veterans of World War I and their families who descended upon Washington, D.C. in 1932 to demand the bonus checks they'd been promised in order to help them get through the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.
Read More
Clearly, Elon Musk has had a tumultuous career. But the entrepreneur's most unfortunate moment may have been the time he lost all his cash in 2010.
Read More
Known to the Celts as "The Cave of Melody", what is now known as Fingal's Cave has been well-documented in ancient Irish and Scottish Celtic legends for centuries.
Read More
The Americas -- the entire region, not just the United States -- was home to several different pre-Christian civilizations. People have heard about the Incas and the Mayans, but there might even be an entire civilization that came before them. Meet the Norte Chico peoples.
Read More
In 2005, the same year as when the Vatican started offering its exorcism course, a 23-year old novice nun, Maricica Irina Cornici, was found dead in Holy Trinity Monastery, a convent located in Tanacu, Romania.
Read More
What's the big deal about a fish being found in an old boat in the sea? The archaeologists believe that the sturgeon was part of a royal power play that ended up an epic fail at the bottom of the sea.
Read More
The "best-equipped and most technologically advanced Arctic expedition to that date" set sail on May 19 with a crew of 134 men and enough provisions to last three years. Despite the planning and care that went into preparing for the journey, the boats disappeared just two months later.
Read More
The Dendera light is a motif carved into the walls of the Hathor Temple in Dendera, Egypt. The image, depicted across three stone reliefs inside the temple, shows a unique depiction of what, at first, looks to be a light bulb shaped like a Crookes tube, with a cord snaking through the middle.
Read More
You might know NASA sent the first men to the Moon in 1969, but how much do you know about the events that caused NASA to be created?
Read More
The Moon is not actually quite as attached to us as you'd think. In fact, it's ever so slowly inching away from Earth, like a guest at an awful party tactically maneuvering toward the exit.
Read More
Zhu took on the name Hongwu and claimed he had the divine right to rule, becoming an absolute monarch. Wary of losing his throne to violence -- after all, he took it by violence -- he stamped down rebellions and even established secret police.
Read More
They're classified as pyrophyllites, a layered silicate formed by hydrothermal alteration (i.e., they dried out). Despite their names, they're not, in fact, spheres, but somewhat flat, oval, and some have three parallel lines across their length. The kicker? They're about 3 billion years old.
Read More
You might have some Neanderthal DNA of your very own. Think of them as cousins. Just like you and your cousins, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had some key differences.
Read More
This legendary swordsman, like all samurai, began his training when he was a wee one, and he wasn't much bigger when he attained his first victory. As The Karate Lifestyle relates, Musashi fought his first sword duel at the age of 13, defeating a fully trained, adult samurai in single combat.
Read More
Think of a sundial, which catches the light and deploys a shadow to tell the viewer what time it was. In practical terms, this meant each village operated under its own solar time, because their relative position to the sun was unique, which in turn produces an individualized time.
Read More
Milgram believed his experiment proved that ordinary people, when directed by an authority figure, would behave in ways that ran counter to their own moral or ethical beliefs. In October 1963, he published his findings in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
Read More
The United States has had a long, sad history of racial violence, and shockingly, few of these incidents are widely remembered. There are the U.S. race riots history forgot.
Read More
One of the most advanced civilizations outside of Greece is also one of the most mysterious. The Etruscans lived in Italy, in what is now Tuscany, but researchers are only now starting to piece their history together.
Read More
Writer and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, was called "the Dean of American literature" and "the greatest American humorist of his age" and his books are still widely read today. Here's a look at some of his famous friendships.
Read More