When the American Revolution broke out in 1775, the colonists weren’t fighting united under a single flag. Instead, most regiments participating in the war for independence against the British fought under their own flags. In June of 1775, the Second Continental Congress met in ...read more

London’s Great Stink of 1858 This summer heat wave has lived in infamy not only for its soaring temperatures but also for the malodorous stench it unleashed on England’s capital. Many Londoners had recently traded in their chamber pots for water closets, which flushed an ...read more

1. Teenage shepherds accidentally stumbled upon the first set of Dead Sea Scrolls. In late 1946 or early 1947, Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and sheep near the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in what is now known as the ...read more

1. He was of French extraction. Paul Revere’s father, Apollos Rivoire, was a French Huguenot who immigrated to Boston at age 13 and Anglicized his family name before marrying a local girl named Deborah Hitchbourn. Born around 1734 and one of 11 or 12 children, Paul never learned ...read more

When a Tyrannosaurus rex comes thundering through the brush, its giant jaws ready to snap you in two, what’s the best place to hide? You might reasonably think of jumping in a lake. With their puny arms, bulky legs and heavy tails, theropod dinosaurs couldn’t have been the ...read more

1856: The Tower of London hosts a lion washing extravaganza In the days leading up to April 1, 1856, London residents received an official-looking invitation printed on Tower of London stationery and bearing a crimson wax seal. Signed “Herbert de Grassen,” supposedly a “senior ...read more

For centuries, scientists and historians have pored over the mysterious Shroud of Turin, a bloodstained piece of linen that bears the faint outline of a longhaired man with wounds consistent with crucifixion. Many believe that Jesus Christ was buried in the 14-foot-long cloth, ...read more

A cedar oil enema might sound like something off a modern-day spa menu, but until recently it was one of the ways Egyptian embalmers were thought to remove organs during mummification. It turns out the practice wasn’t as widespread as previously thought, and neither were other ...read more

1. He was of Viking extraction. Though he spoke a dialect of French and grew up in Normandy, a fiefdom loyal to the French kingdom, William and other Normans descended from Scandinavian invaders. William’s great-great-great-grandfather, Rollo, pillaged northern France with ...read more

If bird watchers could travel back 100 million years, they would see double, according to new research. At the dawn of bird history, early fliers sported not one but two sets of feathers, Chinese paleontologists claim in the latest issue of Science. Presenting an analysis of 11 ...read more

The car-sized rover Curiosity arrived on Mars on August 6, 2012, after an eight-month journey from Cape Canaveral. Since landing in the Red Planet’s Gale Crater, a vast depression the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, the rover has spent its days capturing images, ...read more

According to legend, Viking raiders used a mythic tool known as a sunstone to navigate the rough northern seas during their long journeys across unfamiliar waters. The device would have allowed them to pinpoint the sun even when it was veiled by dense clouds and fog. Historians ...read more

The world was a very different place 3.5 million years ago. A land bridge connected Alaska and Russia. Our ancestors, the australopithecines, were first appearing in Africa. And giant camels roamed the Arctic, looking a whole lot like their desert-based descendants do today. ...read more

What happened to the Neanderthals? Our close evolutionary cousins dominated Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia for hundreds of thousands of years before dying out an estimated 30,000 years ago. Along the way, the stocky hominins developed a rich culture, stalked many a ...read more

Everyone wanted a piece of Richard I after his death in 1199 at age 41. Nicknamed the Lionheart for his battlefield bravery and military shrewdness during the Third Crusade, the medieval king met his end while inspecting a French castle he’d besieged. A crossbow bolt pierced his ...read more

February 2003: Antwerp Diamond Center Last week, as Monday’s robbers prepared to storm the jewel-laden plane, exactly 10 years had passed since Belgium fell victim to another giant diamond theft. On February 16, 2003, years of planning culminated in a break-in at the Antwerp ...read more

1. Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets. Forget almost every Viking warrior costume you’ve ever seen. Sure, the pugnacious Norsemen probably sported headgear, but that whole horn-festooned helmet look? Depictions dating from the Viking age don’t show it, and the only authentic ...read more

1. Cleopatra and Mark Antony Cleopatra VII of Egypt is often remembered for her legendary powers of seduction and mastery at building shrewd alliances. Still, her final political and romantic partnership—with the Roman general Mark Antony—brought about the deaths of both lovers ...read more

1. Joan’s real name was Jehanne d’Arc, Jehanne Tarc, Jehanne Romée or possibly Jehanne de Vouthon—but she didn’t go by any of these. Joan didn’t hail from a place called Arc, as the typical Anglicization of her father’s surname, d’Arc (sometimes rendered as Darc or Tarc), might ...read more

Nine million years ago, central Spain teemed with fearsome, toothy predators that fed upon ancient herbivores resembling today’s horses, antelopes and wild boar. With multiple species of inveterate hunters on the prowl, you’d think these prehistoric neighbors regularly rumbled ...read more

1. Michelangelo wanted nothing to do with the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. In 1508, 33-year-old Michelangelo was hard at work on Pope Julius II’s marble tomb, a relatively obscure piece now located in Rome’s San Pietro in Vincoli church. When Julius asked the esteemed artist to ...read more

The family history research website findmypast.com has brought attention to the link between accused murderer Lizzie Borden and her ancestor Thomas Cornell, convicted in 1673 of burning his mother to death. A relatively new addition to the online genealogy landscape, ...read more

Over the years, scientists have put forth a number of different hypotheses for how the moon formed. In the late 1800s, Charles Darwin’s son George proposed that a chunk of matter spun off from Earth and became our planet’s satellite. According to the “capture” model, meanwhile, ...read more

Archaeologists from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have pinpointed the exact spot where Roman senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death on March 15, 44 B.C., they announced yesterday. The site, located in Rome’s Largo di Torre Argentina archaeological area, once ...read more

1. Caligula wasn’t his real name. Think of it as the ancient equivalent of miniature Nikes and tuxedo-imprinted onesies: Even in Roman times, parents liked to proudly dress their progeny in tiny versions of grownup gear. And so, when the respected general Germanicus brought his ...read more

A gun once owned by the legendary train and bank robber Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, fetched $175,000 at auction on Sunday. The sale is not yet considered final and official, but according to reports the Colt .45 went to an anonymous online bidder. Owned by ...read more

The Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since late August, has gathered strong evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet’s surface, NASA scientists announced last week. Just weeks into its two-year mission, the robotic explorer beamed back images of two rocky ...read more

By this time next week, one of U.S. history’s most perplexing mysteries might finally be solved. Earlier today, police drilled under a driveway at a home outside Detroit in their latest attempt to uncover clues about union leader Jimmy Hoffa’s 1975 vanishing act. According to ...read more

For the last four decades, a portrait of a woman closely resembling the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s famed Mona Lisa has remained under lock and key in a Swiss vault. While her wildly famous sister has flashed her enigmatic half-smile at an endless stream of Louvre visitors, ...read more

1. Ancient Egyptian Remedies The Ebers Papyrus, a medical text that dates back to 1550 B.C., offers a number of recommended cures for ancient Egyptians suffering from hair loss. Suggestions include a mixture of fats from a hippopotamus, crocodile, tomcat, snake and ibex; ...read more

The remains of five British airmen who crashed in Germany during World War II have been discovered near Mannheim, researchers announced on Friday. Their bomber went down with seven men aboard during a raid on a Czech arms factory in April 1943. German soldiers recovered two of ...read more

Back in 2001, archaeologists took notice when marble fragments showed up on a freshly plowed field in southern Turkey. Now, more than a decade later, a dig organized by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has unearthed a giant ancient mosaic in what was once a far-flung corner of ...read more

1. The original goal of the Gregorian calendar was to change the date of Easter. In 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar, Europe adhered to the Julian calendar, first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. Since the Roman emperor’s system miscalculated ...read more

King of England for just two years, Richard III died in battle against the rival House of Tudor in August 1485. In the years following his death at age 32, his opponents circulated defamatory stories about the last Plantagenet ruler, portraying him as a brutal tyrant suspected of ...read more

1. Diane de Poitiers Born into a noble French family in 1499, the celebrated beauty Diane de Poitiers received a humanist education fit for a Renaissance king. At 15 she married Louis de Brézé, a royal officer 40 years her senior. Her husband’s prominent position thrust Diane ...read more

One hundred years ago, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott died on an Antarctic ice shelf after a failed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. SS Terra Nova, the former whaler that had carried Scott’s expedition to Antarctica, sailed home without its captain and ...read more

1. Jimmy Hoffa On July 30, 1975, James Riddle Hoffa, one of the most influential American labor leaders of the 20th century, disappeared in Detroit, Michigan, never to be heard from again. Born in 1913 to a poor coal miner in Indiana, the charismatic Hoffa proved a natural ...read more

Since 2010, a number of studies have suggested that Neanderthals, previously considered our close evolutionary cousins, are actually the ancestors of most humans alive today. After successfully sequencing the extinct hominins’ genome, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for ...read more

In the first half of the 20th century, experts thought they had pinned down the evolutionary history that culminated in our species, Homo sapiens. According to conventional wisdom, our direct ancestor Homo erectus—first discovered in Indonesia in 1891—branched off from the common ...read more

1. Bona Sforza Born around 1494 into a powerful family that ruled Milan, Bona Sforza was married off to an older widower, King Sigismund I of Poland. Well-educated and clever, she involved herself in the realm’s political and financial affairs. But despite her influence, she ...read more

On February 25, 1852, the British troopship HMS Birkenhead steamed along the South African coastline, transporting soldiers destined for battle with Xhosa freedom fighters. The vessel’s 643 passengers and crew, most of them from Scotland, included 25 women and 31 children, ...read more

1. Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (1804) On July 11, 1804, years of escalating personal and political tensions culminated in the most famous duel in American history: the standoff between Alexander Hamilton, a leading Federalist and former secretary of the treasury, and Aaron ...read more

Located near the Guatemalan border in present-day Campeche, Mexico, the city of Uxul served as one of the Maya empire’s trading hubs during the Classic period from 250 to 900 A.D. It was discovered in 1934 by archaeologists Karl Ruppert and John Denison, who named the site after ...read more

With increasing frequency over the last few years, studies have shown that Neanderthals weren’t so different from us after all. Experts now think the stocky hunters crafted complex tools, buried their dead, spoke a language and expressed themselves artistically. In 2010, ...read more

Two thousand years ago, Roman expansion thrust Germanic Europe into turmoil, sparking conflicts between tribes and spurring groups to militarize. It was during this turbulent era, right around the birth of Jesus Christ, that hundreds of warriors died en masse on the Jutland ...read more

1. At first, the idea of a Medal of Honor was dismissed as too “European.” During the American Revolution, George Washington established the first combat decoration in U.S. history, known as the Badge of Military Merit. After the conflict it fell into disuse, as did its ...read more

How did America get its name? Five hundred years ago, two German cartographers drafted maps of the world featuring a boomerang-shaped landmass lying far to the west of Europe and Africa, in the middle of a giant ocean. The mapmakers, Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, ...read more

In 2008, a paleoanthropologist’s 9-year-old son stumbled across the ancient remains of a juvenile male in the fossil-rich Malapa cave deposits north of Johannesburg, South Africa. The young explorer had unwittingly discovered the first known specimen of a new species that ...read more