Gerald Ford’s presidential pardon of Richard Nixon ensured that the disgraced president never faced legal consequences for his involvement in the Watergate cover-up. But a lot of people in Nixon’s orbit did go to prison—including Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal lawyer, who ...read more

If you only read F. Scott Fitzgerald, you might get the impression that everyone during the 1920s flouted Prohibition and got away with it. But while it’s true that a small portion of white, middle- and upper-class urbanites lived that way, the Roaring Twenties was also the ...read more

At a fourth century Roman grave site in England, archaeologists have discovered that a third of the skeletons are decapitated—an unusually high percentage, even for the Roman Empire. “Low proportions of decapitated burials are a common component of Roman cemeteries,” said Andy ...read more

Most government shutdowns happen over hot button issues where the Democratic and Republican parties strongly disagree—abortion in the 1970s, Medicaid and Medicare in the ‘90s; and Obamacare, DACA and a “border wall” in the 21s century. Similarly, the record eight shutdowns that ...read more

Say you’re out walking in the desert and see a flash of light in the sky that you can’t identify. If this happened between 1952 and 1969, you could report that light to Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force’s project to investigate unidentified flying objects—aka, UFOs. Project ...read more

There are a lot of mysteries surrounding Viking graves, and a recent discovery has raised a new one: Why did Icelandic Vikings kill male horses in their prime and bury them with middle-aged men? And why, it seems, were these Vikings more inclined to eat female horses? ...read more

Islam has existed in North America for hundreds of years, ever since enslaved people captured in Africa brought their religion over. In the 1700s, an English translation of the Quran (or Koran) actually became a bestseller among Protestants in England and its American colonies. ...read more

The Schiedam was a pirate ship for a period of time in between its life in the Dutch East India Company and its time in the English fleet. It wrecked in 1684 off the coast of Cornwall in England while transporting English munitions; and recently, two hand grenades still filled ...read more

In 1619, the Jamestown colony—North America’s first permanent English settlement—consisted mostly of single men looking to get rich. For the Virginia Company, this presented a problem: how to keep it growing when few single English women wanted to venture to the struggling ...read more

The Earth’s crust is a visual timeline that goes back billions of years. But all over the world, there’s a gap in the timeline—a huge chunk of crust that should be there yet isn’t. Now, scientists say that the crust may have been destroyed during Snowball Earth, a hypothetical ...read more

There will be a record number of women in Congress. When the 116th Congress begins on January 3, it will have a record-breaking 125 women. It’s still a long way from gender parity—there are 410 male members—but it’s a big leap from the so-called “Year of the Woman” in 1992, ...read more

In 2019, the U.S. Navy will finally stop allowing officers to punish sailors by limiting their meals to bread and water. The Navy adopted this punishment in its early days from the British Royal Navy and continued using it long after the Royal Navy stopped using it in 1891. ...read more

What happens when a large portion of your country’s archaeological treasures are “owned” by another country that stole them? That’s the position non-western nations around the world find themselves in, with most of their cultural heritage residing in European and U.S. museums—but ...read more

The late 19th century was a period of political whiplash for the south. Black men were guaranteed the right to vote, black candidates won positions and started to change state governments—and then white reactionaries staged power grabs to regain control and rewrote their ...read more

A series of strong storms have revealed more than 85 dinosaur footprints in the county of East Sussex, England. At least seven different species left these tracks over 100 million years ago, making them the most diverse and detailed collection from the Cretaceous Period ever ...read more

The United Kingdom’s Brexit chaos is so intense that it’s easy to forget about the country’s political scandals of yore. Rest assured that both royals and members of Parliament were making sketchy decisions long before Brexit. 1763: John Wilkes’ Parliamentary Ouster In 1763, a ...read more

In November 1995, Newt Gingrich gave President Bill Clinton an ultimatum: approve cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, or he would shut down the government. The ensuing shutdowns were a public embarrassment for Gingrich and a victory for Clinton, but the president’s ...read more

When slavery was legal, its proponents often justified it with the Bible; specifically, a verse that tells servants to obey their masters. There were also a lot of verses that abolitionists could and did use to argue against slavery. But you wouldn’t find those in the ...read more

Archaeologists have accused a construction crew of drilling into an ancient platform about a mile away from the famous Stonehenge ring. The flint-and-animal-bone platform is about 6,000 years old, and is part of an ancient settlement called Blick Mead. Engineers were working on a ...read more

These boots were made for walking—and surviving the ravages of time. In London, archaeologists discovered the 500-year-old skeleton of a man lying face down in the mud of the River Thames, wearing thigh-high leather boots that were basically still intact. The boots date to the ...read more

Every year in early December, children in Austria get ready for St. Nicholas to visit them. If they’ve been good, he’ll reward them with presents and treats. But if they’ve been bad, they’ll get a lot more than a lump of coal—they’ll have to face Krampus. Who’s Krampus, you ask? ...read more

The Democratic National Convention was a tense scene in July of 1972. The gathering in Miami came just one month after burglars had broken into the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. The candidate who won the presidential nomination would be the one to take on President ...read more

The ninth plague of Egypt was complete darkness that lasted for three days. But in 536 A.D., much of the world went dark for a full 18 months, as a mysterious fog rolled over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The fog blocked the sun during the day, causing temperatures ...read more

Pivotal events have a way of attracting harmful myths and conspiracy theories. This goes for great achievements like the moon landing (which Buzz Aldrin punched a guy for denying) as well as great tragedies like Martin Luther King’s assassination, the 9/11 attacks and the Titanic ...read more

Many people have a little bit of Neanderthal DNA. In recent years, this discovery has led scientists to conclude that early humans mated with Neanderthals over a single period of time. However, new research suggests that these groups mated with each other over multiple ...read more

Idlewild, Michigan was once known as “The Black Eden”—a resort where black writers, business people, physicians and entertainers spent their summers in a racially segregated country. In its earliest days, you could run into W.E.B. Du Bois; in its later years, you could catch an ...read more

The small, 340-ton São José-Paquete de Africa set out from Mozambique in December 1794. Even though the ship was no more than no more than 130 feet long (and probably closer to 100), the crew had packed 543 captive people aboard. The crew shackled them in place to prevent them ...read more

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered dozens of mummified cats along with 100 wooden gilded statues of felines and a bronze statue of a cat goddess named Bastet. These artifacts were found inside the King Userkaf pyramid complex in the Saqqara necropolis, a famous burial ground ...read more

Ancient people of North America’s Clovis culture migrated to South America roughly 11,000 years ago, then mysteriously vanished, researchers have discovered. In a new study, researchers analyzed DNA from 49 people living over a span of 10,000 years in Belize, Brazil, the Central ...read more

Gary Hart was the presumed Democratic presidential candidate in the spring of 1987 when the Miami Herald reported that rumors of his “womanizing” were true. The ensuing scandal over his extramarital affair with a woman named Donna Rice ended his candidacy. Yet according to Gail ...read more

Could a large, cigar-shaped object floating through space be part of an alien spacecraft? Astronomers at Harvard University don’t rule it out in a recent paper. Scientists spotted the object in October 2017, at first thinking it was a comet or an asteroid, and later wondering if ...read more

Do U.S. citizenship and voting rights go hand and hand? For most of the country’s history, the answer has been no—just look at the example of Native voting rights, which weren’t secured in all states until the 1960s. Native Americans couldn’t be U.S. citizens when the country ...read more

Imagine a world in which political norms have broken down. Senators use bad faith arguments to block the government from getting anything done. An autocrat rigs elections and gives himself complete control over the government. Even stranger, many voters subscribe to the ...read more

Researchers in Egypt have discovered a 4,500-year-old ramp system used to haul alabaster stones out of a quarry, and news reports have suggested that it could provide clues as to how Egyptians built the pyramids. Yet while the ramp system is a significant technological discovery, ...read more

Duck-billed dinosaurs may have “tooted” different notes from their trumpet-like nasal passages depending on what species they were, new research suggests. Paleontologists made this discovery while studying an unnamed species of the duck-billed Parasaurolophus. This type of ...read more

The Great Depression was a time of great economic and social change that affected many parts of American life—including Halloween. Parents, concerned about their sons running amok on All Hallows' Eve, organized “haunted houses” or “trails” to keep them off the streets. Halloween ...read more

The Underground Railroad ran south as well as north. For slaves in Texas, refuge in Canada must have seemed impossibly far away. Fortunately, slavery was also illegal in Mexico. Researchers estimate 5,000 to 10,000 people escaped from bondage into Mexico, says Maria Hammack, who ...read more

In the 1800s, taking a photo of a dead body wasn’t creepy—it was comforting. In an era when photos were expensive and many people didn’t have any pictures of themselves when they were alive, post-mortem photography was a way for families to remember their ...read more

For early American settlers, buying a lottery ticket wasn’t just a vice or a guilty pleasure—it was a colonist’s civic duty. That’s because lotteries were one of the biggest ways that the 13 colonies supported themselves financially. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the colonies ...read more

Before Texas was a U.S. state, it was its own independent nation where both Mexicans and white immigrants were citizens. But during the nine years that the Republic of Texas existed, Mexicans became outsiders as white settlers made it more difficult for them to vote and hold ...read more

One September morning in 1976, a bomb blew up a car as it was driving up Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. When police arrived at the scene, they found a human foot in the road, and a man lying on the pavement who was missing half his legs. Minutes later, he was dead. That man was ...read more

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, there were tens of thousands of Mexican Americans living in California, Texas and the New Mexico territory; all former parts of Mexico that the U.S. had claimed in the 1840s. With the wounds of the Mexican-American War fresh, these Mexican ...read more

Sure, the story of King Arthur drawing Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake is pretty cool. But have you heard about the eight-year-old girl who pulled a sword that’s at least 1,000 years old out of a Swedish lake? The Swedish news site The Local reports that Saga Vanecek was ...read more

Every fall, grocery stores line their shelves with pumpkin spice-flavored products that range from traditional pumpkin pies to the more questionable pumpkin spice candy corn. The flavor is a mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves—all spices that humans have enjoyed in ...read more

The year the Civil War ended, the U.S. amended the Constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude. But it purposefully left in one big loophole for people convicted of crimes. The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, ...read more

The largest-ever survey of a region from the Maya civilization has located over 60,000 previously unknown structures in northern Guatemala. The survey, conducted with the help of lasers, challenges long-held assumptions that this area was poorly connected and sparsely populated. ...read more

Whether you like it, hate it or just use it to decorate, you probably think of candy corn as a Halloween treat. But in the beginning, it was associated more with chickens than the spooky holiday. Candy corn’s origins are a little iffy, but it seems to have come out around the ...read more

A housewife and salesman have an affair, then hatch a plot to kill her husband and claim insurance money on his death. If this sounds like a film noir plot, that’s because it is; it’s the plot of James Cain’s 1943 hardboiled crime novella Double Indemnity and the 1944 film ...read more