Turkeys Were Once Worshipped Like Gods
Turkeys these days are mostly seen as vessels for stuffing on your Thanksgiving table. But in 300 B.C., the birds were viewed by the Maya as vessels of the gods and honored accordingly. In fact, the birds were originally domesticated to play a part in religious rites. Prized ...read more
How Soldier's Rations Went From Live Hogs to Indestructible MREs
As the saying goes, an army marches on its stomach. For contemporary U.S. armed forces in combat, that usually means Meals, Ready-to-Eat, or MREs. MREs first came to the U.S. Armed forces in the early 1980s, as replacements for the much derided canned food rations that had ...read more
A Visual History of Black Friday: From Financial Crash to Shopping Mania
Every year, more than 100 million Americans hit the stores the Friday after Thanksgiving in the hopes of scoring a great deal on a 4KTV or the latest toy craze. Although Black Friday has practically become a holiday of its own, it hasn’t always been this way.For a ...read more
Long-Lost Trojan City Found in Greece
According to ancient Greek texts and myths, a group of Trojan prisoners founded the city of Tenea after their devastating defeat by Greek hero Odysseus—and an enormous wooden horse—in the Trojan War. More than 3,000 years later, near a small village in southern Greece called ...read more
Meet J. Allen Hynek, the Astronomer Who First Classified UFO 'Close Encounters'
It’s September 1947, and the U.S. Air Force has a problem. A rash of reports about mysterious objects in the skies has the public on edge and the military baffled. The Air Force needs to figure out what’s going on—and fast. It launches an investigation it calls Project Sign. By ...read more
The Jonestown Radio Network: How Jim Jones Spread His Message Of Death
“There’s no way we can survive.” It was November 18, 1978, and cult leader Jim Jones needed to convince over 900 of his followers that they needed to die. As he pressured members of the Peoples Temple to drink cyanide-laced punch, they screamed, wept and argued. Slowly, they ...read more
Colonists at the First Thanksgiving Were Mostly Men Because Women Had Perished
As families around the country prepare to gather with family, eat turkey and perhaps partake in some Black Friday shopping, they might be surprised to learn how much we don’t know about the origins of the Thanksgiving. What we do know is most of the adult colonists in attendance ...read more
Before the Green Book, These Resorts Offered Hidden Safe Havens for Black Americans
Idlewild, Michigan was once known as “The Black Eden”—a resort where black writers, business people, physicians and entertainers spent their summers in a racially segregated country. In its earliest days, you could run into W.E.B. Du Bois; in its later years, you ...read more
How 'The Great Gatsby' Chronicled the Dark Side of the Roaring '20s
More than any other author, F. Scott Fitzgerald can be said to have captured the rollicking, tumultuous decade known as the Roaring Twenties, from its wild parties, dancing and illegal drinking to its post-war prosperity and its new freedoms for women. Above all, Fitzgerald’s ...read more
Does This 1,500-Year-Old Painting Show What Jesus Looked Like?
In an extremely rare early painting found in an ancient Israeli church, Jesus looks completely different from the long-haired, bearded Western image of him. Archaeologists from the University of Haifa in Israel discovered the previously unknown 1,500-year-old painting of Jesus in ...read more
Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare?
North American colonists’ warfare against Native Americans often was horrifyingly brutal. But one method they appear to have used shocks even more than all the bloody slaughter: The gifting of blankets and linens contaminated with smallpox. The virus causes a disease that can ...read more
Mormons Tried to Stop Native Child Slavery in Utah. They Ended Up Encouraging It
When Brigham Young and his band of Mormon settlers marched into Utah in 1847, they saw a vast expanse of land they envisioned as a sanctuary. Salt Lake City would soon become the bustling center of life in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But that life would rest ...read more
How the Great Depression Became the Golden Age for Monopoly
When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, people had played Monopoly for at least three decades. But the downturn proved to be an unlikely golden age for the real estate board game—and one with riddled with irony.Elizabeth J. Magie, the game’s originator, first received her ...read more
Humans Are Just as Violent as Neanderthals, Scientists Conclude
Contrary to popular scientific opinion, it turns out life for Neanderthals probably wasn’t any more violent or dangerous than it was for our modern human ancestors. In a new study, researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany compared the head injuries suffered by ...read more
How Alexander Hamilton's Men Surprised the Enemy at the Battle of Yorktown
Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, known for his famous, fatal duel with Aaron Burr—and his ability to draw sold-out crowds to a hit musical examining his life—played a key role in a battle that brought an end to the American Revolutionary War. And in ...read more