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7 Events That Enraged Colonists and Led to the American Revolution
The American colonists’ breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn’t a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the 13 colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade ...read more
Why Does This Remote Glacial Lake Contain Hundreds of Skeletons?
Ever since a British forest guide first stumbled on Roopkund Lake in northern India in 1942, experts have struggled to understand how hundreds of human skeletons ended up in this small, shallow glacial lake, which sits in a valley more than 16,000 feet above sea level. Over the ...read more
Who Were the Sons of Liberty?
The Sons of Liberty were a grassroots group of instigators and provocateurs in colonial America who used an extreme form of civil disobedience—threats, and in some cases actual violence—to intimidate loyalists and outrage the British government. The goal of the radicals was to ...read more
UN Leader Dag Hammarskjold Died in Mysterious Circumstances in 1961. What Really Happened?
Shortly after midnight on September 18, 1961, a chartered DC-6 airplane carrying United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold on a peacekeeping mission to the newly independent African nation of the Congo crashed in a forest near Ndola, in the British protectorate of ...read more
Why Napoleon Kidnapped One Pope After Another
Between the hours of 2 and 3 on the morning of July 6, 1809, French troops under the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte scaled the walls of the gardens of the Quirinal Palace in Rome and penetrated into the part of the palace occupied by papal servants. After an hour of violent ...read more
5 Reasons Why Woodstock '69 Became Legendary
Before mid-August in 1969, no one knew just how big the Woodstock music festival would become. It was organized by people who had originally just wanted to build a music studio in the upstate New York village. When word got out that a event was in the works, locals had fought to ...read more
How Towns Around Woodstock Pushed to Cancel the Hippie Takeover
Joseph G. Owen wasn’t exactly the target market for the Woodstock festival. But when he saw a sign advertising “3 Days of Peace & Music” while on vacation in Florida, he packed his bags and headed to New York. Owen didn’t want to attend the festival—he wanted to stop it. The ...read more
America's History of Slavery Began Long Before Jamestown
In late August 1619, the White Lion, an English privateer commanded by John Jope, sailed into Point Comfort and dropped anchor in the James River. Virginia colonist John Rolfe documented the arrival of the ship and “20 and odd” Africans on board. His journal entry is immortalized ...read more
How the Cold War Space Race Led to U.S. Students Doing Tons of Homework
Middle-schoolers who trudge home each day with a 50-pound backpack and hours of homework would have had an easier time in 1901. That’s when the anti-homework movement was at its peak and the state of California actually banned all homework for grades below high school. From the ...read more
The Many Places Claiming to Be the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’
Want to visit the original Seven Wonders of the World? Unfortunately you can’t, because only one of them exists anymore. The original list—sometimes called The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—comes from a 225 B.C.E. work by Philo of Byzantium called On The Seven Wonders. The ...read more
How Far Did Ancient Rome Spread?
Legend has it that Romulus and Remus—twin brothers who were also demi-gods—founded Rome on the River Tiber in 753 B.C. Over the next eight and a half centuries, it grew from a small town of pig farmers into a vast empire that stretched from England to Egypt and completely ...read more
How the Immigration Act of 1965 Changed the Face of America
When the U.S. Congress passed—and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law—the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, the move was largely seen as symbolic. "The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the ...read more
How Fear of a WWII Invasion Gave Rise to Smokey Bear
“Remember Pearl Harbor!” “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships.” Those are among the most famous slogans of World War II. But another poster child birthed during the war—Smokey Bear—might be even better remembered. The ad campaign that spawned the cartoonish bear, and a fire prevention ...read more
How Andrew Jackson Rode a Populist Wave to Become America's First 'Outsider' President
The “outsider” candidate running against “Washington insiders” has become a familiar figure on both ends of the political spectrum. But back in the 1820s, there was no such thing as an anti-establishment, populist candidate—until Andrew Jackson invented it. At the time, the 50th ...read more
What Type of Criminal Are You? 19th-Century Doctors Claimed to Know by Your Face
Can you tell who a criminal is just by looking at them? No you can’t, but that didn’t stop the idea from gaining traction in the late 19th century. Early criminologists in the U.S. and Europe seriously debated whether criminals have certain identifying facial features separating ...read more