Jennie Cohen

Originally known as SEAL Team Six, the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DevGru) is one of several publicly disclosed units under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), an elite and highly classified group that coordinates counterterrorism and other ...read more

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

Paul Revere is best known as the Boston silversmith immortalized in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem describing the Patriot's midnight ride to warn about a British attack. But that 1775 ride (which wasn't exactly as Longfellow described) is only one chapter in Revere's role in ...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

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

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

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

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

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

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 leader ...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

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

1. She didn’t have a passport. Despite being history’s most widely traveled head of state—she reportedly visited 116 countries during her reign—Elizabeth did not hold a passport. Since all British passports are issued in the queen’s name, she herself didn’t need one. She also ...read more

Several thousand years ago, whether you were an Egyptian with migraines or a feverish Greek, chances are your doctor would try one first-line treatment before all others: bloodletting. He or she would open a vein with a lancet or sharpened piece of wood, causing blood to flow out ...read more

In early 1914, the White House announced that Woodrow Wilson would hold a series of regularly scheduled press conferences. To the dismay of career White House reporters, whispers swirled that a congressional committee would determine which journalists deserved invitations. Eleven ...read more

1. We remember the Maine, but we don’t understand it. In January 1898, as tensions flared between Cuban revolutionaries and Spanish troops, the battleship USS Maine was sent to Havana to protect American interests and civilians there. On February 15 a massive explosion sank the ...read more

In human “natural fertility societies,” meaning groups that don’t use birth control, women breastfeed their children for an average of 27 months—until toddlers reach 2 years and a few months in age. While this may seem like a decent amount of time, it’s only a tiny fraction of ...read more

Fire control changed the course of human evolution, allowing our ancestors to stay warm, cook food, ward off predators and venture into harsh climates. It also had important social and behavioral implications, encouraging groups of people to gather together and stay up late. ...read more

1. The word “penny” and its variations across Europe—including the German “pfennig” and the Swedish “penning”—originally denoted any sort of coin or money, not just a small denomination. 2. Offa, an Anglo-Saxon king, introduced the first English coin known as the penny around 790 ...read more

St. Patrick was Irish. Though one of Ireland’s patron saints, Patrick was born in what is now England, Scotland or Wales—interpretations vary widely—to a Christian deacon and his wife, probably around the year 390. According to the traditional narrative, at 16 he was enslaved by ...read more

1. Richard Nixon Long before anyone called him “tricky,” the man who would become the 37th U.S. president was seriously smitten. In 1938 Richard Nixon, then a young lawyer, landed a part in a community theater production. Fellow cast member Pat Ryan, a high school teacher, ...read more

“I am born.” Born in 1812 to middle-class parents in the English city of Portsmouth, Charles Dickens—like several of his protagonists—entered the workforce at a young age. When his father was sent to debtors’ prison, 12-year-old Boz (Charles’ childhood nickname) helped ...read more

Written by archaeologists at Simon Fraser University in Canada, the latest study isn’t the first to hint that Stone Age humans’ thirst for cold ones inspired plant domestication. Nonetheless, said lead author Brian Hayden, the theory “has always been treated somewhat humorously.” ...read more

Borrowing aspects of the Etruscan alphabet, the ancient Romans were among the first to develop a written script for transactions and correspondence. By the fifth century A.D. it included early versions of lowercase letters and sometimes flowed like modern cursive. After the Roman ...read more

Typed on yellowed pages with a handmade cover, the manuscript that inspired the new book comes from an unlikely source: Sydney George Hulme Beaman, the British author and illustrator who created the “Toytown” radio series for children. Beaman wrote in a preface that a one-legged ...read more

When Barack Obama celebrated his 50th birthday in August, journalists and experts noted that the president was showing more wear and tear—mostly in the form of wrinkles and gray hair—than when he took office in January 2009. Their observations sparked a flurry of news reports ...read more

1. Nancy Wake: Flirted her way through checkpoints and karate-chopped a Nazi guard to death In the mid-1930s, an Australian journalist visited Germany to report on the rise of fascism and interview Adolf Hitler. The atrocities she saw there, which included the public beating of ...read more

August 24, 1814 At the height of the War of 1812 between the United States and England, British troops stormed the White House. Soldiers reportedly sat down to eat a meal made of leftover food before ransacking the presidential mansion and setting it ablaze. Fortunately, ...read more

Life was no picnic for the Jamestown colony’s earliest founders, but at least they had enough to eat. Evidence from waste pits suggests that the settlers, who first arrived on the island in May 1607, feasted on deer, turtles and sturgeon during their first year in the New World, ...read more

Located in the Dordogne region of France, the massive Rouffignac cave complex has captivated tourists and scholars with its vivid drawings of mammoths, rhinoceroses and horses for centuries. In 1956, a decade after its deep caverns harbored Resistance fighters during World War ...read more

Taller and more robust than modern humans but with a smaller cranial capacity, Homo erectus appeared roughly 2 million years ago and spread across Africa, Asia and parts of southern Europe before vanishing from the fossil record some 70,000 years ago. Thought to be our direct ...read more

For as long as people have been tracking and reporting hurricanes, also known as tropical cyclones, they’ve been struggling to find ways to identify them. Until well into the 20th century, newspapers and forecasters in the United States devised names for storms that referenced ...read more

After 10 years of poring over documents and archaeological evidence attesting to the Black Death’s devastation of London in the late 1340s, Barney Sloane smelled a rat. Or rather, he failed to catch a whiff of the flea-infested rodent armies most scholars have charged with ...read more

Born in 1905 in North Platte, Nebraska, Albert Neir Brown was enrolled in ROTC during high school and while attending dental school. Called to active duty in 1937, he reported to Minneapolis’ Fort Snelling, leaving behind his wife, his three children and his practice. In 1941 ...read more

Prehistoric humans began taming wolves at least 15,000 years ago, transforming dangerous pack predators into loyal companions and creating specialized dog breeds for different tasks. (In another version of this story, wolves engineered their own domestication after tasting the ...read more

Origins of the Knights Templar After Christian fighters captured Jerusalem during the First Crusade, groups of pilgrims from across Western Europe began visiting the Holy Land. Many were killed while crossing through Muslim-controlled territory during their journey. Around 1118, ...read more

Joe Valachi In 1963, convicted New York mobster Valachi broke the Mafia’s sacred code of silence to become an informant, revealing key details about the organization’s structure and customs. The first member to publicly acknowledge the existence of the American Mafia, he later ...read more

“The traditional estimate has become iconic,” historian J. David Hacker said. “It’s been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute—620,000—the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American ...read more

The man who popularized the term “survival of the fittest” was not terribly fit himself. Born into a freethinking family of English physicians in 1809, Charles Darwin suffered from a host of conditions beginning in his early 20s, primarily chronic vomiting, abdominal pain and ...read more

The Origins of Absinthe Absinthe’s long history dates back to the ancient Egyptians, who used the drink’s most famous ingredient, the flavorful plant known as wormwood, for medicinal purposes as early as 1550 B.C. Ancient Greek texts also make reference to wormwood-based ...read more

The Nefertiti BustUnearthed nearly a century ago by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in Amarna, Egypt, this painted limestone bust of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti is considered one of the finest examples of ancient Egyptian sculpture. It was identified as a ...read more

1. The mother of John Surratt Jr., who admitted to conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to kidnap the president, but was never convicted of assisting in his murder Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth originally intended to abduct the president, take him to Richmond and ...read more

New York Tribune: March 26, 1911 This New York Tribune cover story from March 26 provides a detailed account of the horror that unfolded the day before, citing numerous officials and survivors. It describes the mad rush for the elevators, the collapse of the building’s sole fire ...read more