In the final months of World War II, as Nazi Germany began to crumble, capturing Berlin had become the ultimate political and military prize. For the Allies—Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union—this was the chance to take the symbolic seat of Hitler’s expansionist, and ...read more

In December 1940, three months after Japan, Germany and Italy signed their “Tripartite Pact” World War II alliance, a convoy of Japanese military leaders headed for Berlin to learn from their new allies. At the head of the group was General Tomoyuki Yamashita, a veteran ...read more

For millennia, a diagnosis of leprosy meant a life sentence of social isolation. People afflicted with the condition now known as Hansen’s disease—a bacterial infection that ravages the skin and nerves and can cause painful deformities—were typically ripped from their families, ...read more

George Washington’s writings have long served as a guide to America’s first president—what he thought, how he made his decisions, even how he felt about his wife. But when it comes to his personal religious beliefs, Washington seems to have been a closed book—or, at least, ...read more

Auschwitz was the largest and deadliest of six dedicated extermination camps where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured and murdered during World War II and the Holocaust under the orders of Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler. As one of the greatest tragedies ...read more

There was little room for light in Theresienstadt—especially in the darkness of early December. Some 140,000 Czech Jews came through the Nazi camp-ghetto and holding pen, with almost one in four eventually submitting to disease or starvation. Those who survived were almost always ...read more

It was a move with the power to unite the country—even if it came at the cost of ruffling a few feathers. Just days after Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977, the new President fulfilled a campaign promise: the granting of a blanket pardon to Vietnam War draft evaders by ...read more

In post-revolutionary Russia, as the country’s thinkers attempted to work out a new way of life for citizens of the Soviet Union, a small number of artists grappled with a different problem: the clothes of the future.  Soviet clothing, they reasoned, should be “rational,” ...read more

The first time A.J. Luna escaped death while serving in Iraq, it was thanks to a Marlboro menthol. It was a blisteringly hot day, and his unit was headed from Baghdad toward LSA Anaconda, an Iraqi air force base about 40 miles north. As part of a mile-long convoy of moving ...read more

In May 1951, one year into the Korean War, PFC Francis P. Wall and his regiment found themselves stationed near Chorwon, about 60 miles north of Seoul. As they were preparing to bombard a nearby village with artillery, all of a sudden, the soldiers saw a strange sight up in the ...read more

The Stone Age began more than two million years ago, and ended around 3300 BC, as humans began to discover metalwork with the dawn of the Bronze Age. Compared to modern humans, Stone Age humans and human ancestors may have been primitive—but they were far more sophisticated than ...read more

On September 2, 2018, a fire ripped through Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum, destroying as much as 90 percent of its items, statues and extraordinary treasures. Among those artifacts whose fate remained unknown was an utterly irreplaceable 11,500-year-old skull known as ...read more

If you had a toothache in Melbourne, Australia, between 1898 and the 1930s, Australian dentist J.J. Forster had a quick solution: Rip it out, and chuck it away. That, it seems, was the technique he used for around 1,000 rotting molars found by archaeologists working on two ...read more

For almost as long as people have kept cows, sheep or goats, they’ve made cheese out of their milk. The ancient Egyptians were no exception, making solid cheese to supplement their already hearty diet of beer, bread, onions and lentils. Archaeologists working on the ancient tomb ...read more

After 75 years, wrecked remains of a U.S. Navy destroyer, cleaved in two during World War II by an underwater explosion, has been located in frigid waters off the Aleutian island of Kiska. A NOAA-funded team of scientists discovered the stern of the USS Abner Read on the ...read more

When John Quincy Adams fell for the woman who would become his wife, his mother worried about the effect it might have on his political dreams, while the future bride’s American ex-pat father worried that Yankees made poor husbands. Louisa Catherine Johnson, as she was then ...read more

After being identified by experts at the British Museum, eight priceless 5,000-year-old artifacts are returning home to Iraq from the United Kingdom after being looted in the early 2000s, the BBC reports. In 2003, amid the chaos that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein, a ...read more

In July 1911, along the East Coast of the United States, temperatures climbed into the 90s and stayed there for days and days, killing 211 people in New York alone. At the end of Pike Street, in Lower Manhattan, a young man leapt off a pier and into the water, after hours of ...read more

Archaeologists have unearthed a cache of thousands of millennia-old pieces of gold jewelry in an ancient burial mound in Kazakhstan. The remote Tarbagatai mountains, where Kazakhstan meets northern China, was once home to the Saka. These expert horsemen were a nomadic people who ...read more

The seven original councillors of what would soon become the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, had voyaged for four long months between Great Britain and the New World. After nearly three weeks of looking, they chose the land for their new settlement of over 100 people on a swampy ...read more

It’s a scene worthy of any Nordic Noir: On a quiet Tuesday morning this week, thieves made off with a selection of Swedish crown jewels, housed in an ancient cathedral—then made their getaway on bicycles and a speedboat. Strängnäs is a small town west of the country’s capital. ...read more

Wherever she was headed, she was going there with her face on. Archaeologists uncovered a 3rd-century sarcophagus containing the skeleton of a Roman woman—as well as a wealth of ancient beauty products, jewelry and a silver hand mirror. The discovery, made late last year, was ...read more

How could the biggest ship in the U.S. Navy vanish without trace? This was the question on many people’s minds in March 1918, when an enormous collier, the USS Cyclops, disappeared on a voyage between the West Indies to Baltimore. A century on, it’s no closer to being answered. ...read more

Archaeologists in Mexico City have found the skeleton of a child at the foot of an ancient temple, believed to been sacrificed to the Aztec god of sun and war. Some 600 years ago, the Templo Mayor stood 200 feet high in the center of the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. It ...read more

Around 800 years ago, 10 people were laid to rest in a cemetery on the Italian island of Sicily. Three were women, two were children. But it was the male skeletons that caught the attention of local archaeologists who uncovered the bones earlier this year. They were far larger ...read more

Almost nothing is known about the Picts. These mysterious people dominated Scotland for around 1200 years—yet sometime around 900 A.D., they vanished, leaving no writings and just a scattering of archaeological sites. Now, a discovery on the remote island of Rousay adds another ...read more

Well over 60 years ago, a team of workers building a dam struck bone near the town of Tsuchiyu Onsen, in Fukushima, Japan. It was recognizably a femur, but didn’t look as though it belonged to any species alive today. Locals concluded that it must be a dinosaur bone, and put it ...read more

Vikings knew their way around a spindle—they were experts at spinning wool and hair into textiles. But, according to new research, they weren’t the first to master the skill. Many hundreds of years ago, in the icy expanses of what is today northeastern Canada, Inuits spun yarn ...read more

It was the first submarine in history to successfully sink an enemy ship. Made out of 40 feet of bulletproof iron, the H.L. Hunley was a Confederate submarine with a crew of eight. But despite its claim to fame, it was a dangerous vessel to be inside. In a career of just eight ...read more

The early morning Armed Forces Vietnam Network radio show was called Dawn Busters, and began with a greeting that boomed forth into the dawn. Each day, host Adrian Cronauer would start his show with the salutation—“Goooooood morning, Vietnam!”—with the “good” stretching out for ...read more

In the early 1980s, Karl F. Koecher and his wife Hanna lived a gold-plated life in New York City’s swish Upper East Side. They drove a new, blue BMW and lived in a luxury co-op alongside the tennis star Ivan Lendl and the comedian Mel Brooks. Hanna was a diamond dealer, blue-eyed ...read more

It was one of the most ingenious prison breaks of all time—if it worked. In 1962, inmates and bank robbers Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin vanished from Alcatraz, the federal island penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco. They had used sharpened spoons to bore ...read more

There didn’t seem many secrets left to find in the Brú na Bóinne archaeological landscape, an extensively researched Unesco World Heritage Site about 30 miles north of Dublin and one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites. Last week, however, a near-unprecedented 40 days ...read more

On October 7, 1885, Friedrich Trump, a 16-year-old German barber, bought a one-way ticket for America, escaping three years of compulsory German military service. He had been a sickly child, unsuited to hard labor, and feared the effects of the draft. It might have been illegal, ...read more

In early June 2014, 52-year-old physicist and explorer Johann Westhauser made his way into a cave that stretched more than 12 miles into the earth. In 1995, he had been part of the team that discovered the cave (known as the Riesending, or ‘Big Thing’) and helped to map its inky ...read more

On July 4, 1826, America celebrated 50 years of independence as, just a few hours apart, two of its Presidents took their final breaths. At the time of his death, Thomas Jefferson was 83, while John Adams had turned 90 the year before. Though both were unwell, their deaths came ...read more

One night in October 1983, two white men waited outside a local dance club near Sunny Side, Georgia for a black man, Timothy Coggins. Coggins was young, exuberant, loved to dance—and was known to date white women. When Coggins emerged, according to court testimony, they lured him ...read more

They have long been maligned with the image of knuckle-dragging, thick-skulled brutes—but more recent evidence tells another story. In recent years, studies have shown that Neanderthals produced art, mourned their dead and even used toothpicks to clean between their teeth, just ...read more

Americans loved Evel Knievel. They loved his ruggedness—a wild boy from Butte, Montana, grown into a swashbuckling superstar, King of the Daredevils, somewhere between Buffalo Bill and the Greatest Show on Earth. They loved to watch him fly. And even as it made them wince, they ...read more

For the White Bronco—perhaps the most infamous vehicle of the late 20th century—it’s been a long, strange trip since the freeway chase that riveted the world. It was midday on Friday June 17, 1994, and Los Angeles police authorities were waiting for Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson ...read more

When the jury acquitted Lorena Bobbitt of all criminal charges in a Virginia courtroom on January 21, 1994, even her supporters couldn’t help but gasp aloud. Seven months earlier, she had severed her husband’s penis with a knife as he slept. Now, after seven hours of ...read more

It’s easy to miss the retailer Cotswold Outdoor, sandwiched between inexpensive women’s clothing stores in Brighton, England. Yet elaborate detailing at the top of the building’s Art Deco facade offers clues to its history. Long before it sold outdoor supplies, the building was ...read more

Growing up in the 1930s in segregated coal mining country in West Virginia, Doris Payne played a game she called “Miss Lady.” She’d don a hat and purse, and imagine herself living a life far from her own impoverished circumstances. This ability to cast herself as someone else ...read more

“Which ‘Sex and the City’ character are you?” It’s a question, that, when typed into Google, yields a whopping 377 million search results. That’s a lot of quizzes about four fictional ladies-about-town named Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. To non-watchers, the HBO ...read more

Was Julia Child a spy? Well, sort of. During the final two years of the Second World War, the woman who would one day be renowned for bringing French cuisine to American kitchens was stationed in Asia, working with top security clearance at the organization which would ...read more

A car pulled up outside a narrow brick building in central Amsterdam, around 10 a.m. on August 4, 1944. High up in the Annex of 263 Prinsengracht, eight Jews had been hiding since 1942. Members of the Gestapo emerged from the car and made their way inside, where they arrested ...read more

For the urban workforce of the Soviet Union, September 29, 1929, was a Sunday like any other—a day of rest after six days of labor. Sunday was the prize at the finish line: a day’s holiday, where people might see family, attend church or clean their homes. But in the eyes of the ...read more

Wherever there’s dumb money, criminality inevitably follows. Such was the case with Beanie Babies in the 1990s. Beanies were one of the decade’s frothiest fads: colorful, pellet-filled plush toys given cutesy names and an aura of collectibility. By mid-decade, investment mania ...read more