Throughout his distinguished government career, Chris Mellon has been keenly focused on the prospect of unconventional national threats. Now he works with a civilian group called To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, trying to prod the U.S. defense and intelligence communities ...read more

A boat carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution is turned away from Havana, Cuba, on this day in 1939. Only 28 immigrants are admitted into the country. After appeals to the Unites States and Canada for entry are denied, the rest are forced to sail back to Europe, ...read more

Established in 1919 to halt British rule in Northern Ireland using armed forces, the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, fought for independence and a reunified republic—often in tandem with, but independent of, the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein. In 1969, demanding British ...read more

When Trisha Meili’s body was discovered in New York City’s Central Park early in the morning on April 20, 1989, she had been so badly beaten and repeatedly raped that she remained in a coma for nearly two weeks and retained no memory of the attack. The brutal assault of the ...read more

On the morning of this day in 2016, Prince, the polymathic musician who created more than 30 albums and won seven Grammy Awards over a 40-year career, is found dead in Paisley Park, his Minnesota home and recording studio. The cause of death was an accidental overdose of the ...read more

On this day in 2003, just three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces pull down a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, symbolizing the end of the Iraqi president’s long, often brutal reign, and a major early victory for the United States. Dramatic ...read more

It’s hard to say how old Chinese culture actually is, but it’s one of the oldest that still has a presence in the modern world. Legends claim that the earliest rulers in China were the Xia Dynasty, from 2100 to 1600 B.C., with Yu as the first emperor, but there is little proof ...read more

From early Mongol invasions to tsarist regimes to ages of enlightenment and industrialization to revolutions and wars, Russia is known not just for its political rises of world power and upheaval, but for its cultural contributions (think ballet, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, caviar and ...read more

It was the time of the world’s first Industrial Revolution, political reform and social change, Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin, a railway boom and the first telephone and telegraph. But the Victorian Era—the 63-year period from 1837-1901 that marked the reign of England’s ...read more

On this day in 1969, 70-year-old Golda Meir makes history when she is elected as Israel’s first female prime minister. She was the country’s fourth prime minister and is still the only woman to have held this post. Meir, who was born in Kiev, Ukraine and raised in Wisconsin, ...read more

Philadelphia, a city in Pennsylvania whose name means City of Brotherly Love, was originally settled by Native American tribes, particularly the Lenape hunter gatherers, around 8000 B.C. By the early 1600s, Dutch, English and Swedish merchants had established trading posts in the ...read more

London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom and one of the largest and most important cities in the world. The area was originally settled by early hunter gatherers around 6,000 B.C., and researchers have found evidence of Bronze Age bridges and Iron Age forts near ...read more

Boston, the largest city in New England, is located on a hilly peninsula in Massachusetts Bay. The region had been inhabited since at least 2400 B.C. by the Massachusetts tribe of Native Americans, who called the peninsula Shawmut. Captain John Smith in 1614 explored the ...read more

St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is one of Christianity’s most widely known figures. But for all of his prevalence in culture, namely the holiday held on the day of his death that bears his name, his life remains somewhat of a mystery.  Many of the stories traditionally ...read more

Feminism, a belief in the political, economic and cultural equality of women, has roots in the earliest eras of human civilization. In his classic Republic, Plato advocated that women possess “natural capacities” equal to men for governing and defending ancient Greece. But many ...read more

Los Angeles, America’s second largest city and the West Coast’s biggest economic powerhouse, was originally settled by indigenous tribes, including the Chumash and Tongva hunter gatherers, by 8000 B.C. Portuguese sailor Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to explore ...read more

In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. When an epidemic spreads beyond a country’s borders, that’s when the disease officially becomes a pandemic. Communicable diseases existed during humankind’s hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian ...read more

From Abigail Adams imploring her husband to “remember the ladies” when envisioning a government for the American colonies, to suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fighting for women's right to vote, to Hillary Clinton becoming the first female nominee for ...read more

For centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument that took Neolithic builders an estimated 1,500 years to erect. Located in southern England, it is comprised of roughly 100 massive upright stones placed in ...read more

Six and a half months before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, New York City’s Madison Square Garden hosted a rally to celebrate the rise of Nazism in Germany. Inside, more than 20,000 attendees raised Nazi salutes toward a 30-foot-tall portrait of George Washington flanked by ...read more

Just a few years after the Civil War, the Chicago businessman George M. Pullman began hiring thousands of African-American men—including many former slaves—to serve white passengers traveling across the country on his company’s luxury railroad sleeping cars. While they were ...read more

As much of the nation was just starting the day on the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four East Coast flights, crashing three of the airplanes into targets in New York and Washington, D.C., with the fourth plane slamming into a field in Pennsylvania after ...read more

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took his first step, Armstrong ...read more

Without them, there would have been no United States of America. The Founding Fathers, a group of predominantly wealthy plantation owners and businessmen, united 13 disparate colonies, fought for independence from Britain and penned a series of influential governing documents ...read more

Love is among the greatest muses, inspiring the world’s most famous romantics, from Shakespeare, who wrote 154 sonnets dealing with love, time, beauty and mortality, to Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda. The work of these authors, poets and playwrights speaks to the enduring ...read more

Valentine’s Day is celebrated every February 14 as couples across the globe honor their spouses, partners and sweethearts. Hundreds of years of traditions and customs have made it into the holiday that we observe today. Here are nine interesting facts about the holiday dedicated ...read more