Latest history Stories
Our average body temperatures seem to be dropping
Inside the extraordinary experiment to save the Stradivarius sound
Humans have been recording sound since before they could play it back
DNA tests can’t tell you your race
Should parents lie to kids about Santa Claus? We asked the experts.
New evidence points to mass graves of people killed in Tulsa’s 1921 race massacre
This website lets you travel back in time to abandoned airfields near your home
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Egypt is reclaiming its mummies and its past
A recent study reinforces the idea that music is universal
Did a Swedish king really try to ban coffee with a deadly scientific experiment?
Twelve photos that capture the wonder of Apollo 11
Forceps changed the way people give birth
Frogs in tiny taffeta shorts paved the way for human in-vitro fertilization
The weirdest things we learned this week: the origin of moron, forgotten scurvy cures, and bisexual space stations
What unearthing ancient cities teaches us about exploring outer space
Why we’re still obsessed with the watches astronauts wore to the moon
How menopause evolved—and what it means for us
The weirdest things we learned this week: 10k steps a day is totally made up and Charmin knows exactly how you poop
Stress and sleeplessness has been a problem since the Victorian era
Explore the gauges, levers, and history of a 747′s iconic cockpit
Century-old ship logs show how much ice the Arctic has lost
Meet the hero who saved everything you love about modern cities
Humans started transforming Earth a lot earlier than we thought
Menstrual cups were invented in 1867. What took them so long to gain popularity?
How predicting the future shifted from fiction to fact—and what we lost along the way
How humans created color for thousands of years
We’re barreling towards another Dust Bowl
Rising high in 19th-century Chicago required nerves of steel
The weirdest things we learned this week: Feminist butter sculptures and America’s first favorite pastime
The weirdest things we learned this week: College students swallowed guppies for sport and chickens wore glasses
Money, shoes, poop, and other highlights from the 796 items we’ve left on the moon
Buzz Aldrin sloshed around in pee on the moon (and 11 other Apollo facts)
The Apollo moon rocks continue to reveal secrets of the cosmos
The Apollo 11 mission as told through the astronauts’ heart rates
The history of science is for sale
The weirdest things we learned this week: Victorian sex drugs and deadly milk injections
Groovy lunar tunes to help you celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing
What this 17th century astronomer can teach us about succeeding in the modern world
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Britain makes Alan Turing, the father of AI, the face of its 50-pound note
Arctic lead pollution can tell us a lot about medieval economies
The weirdest things we learned this week: Nazis ate camel poop and pregnancy tests spread a fungal plague
The real-world Mount Doom just erupted (again)
Vandals, angry artists, and mustachioed tinkerers: The story of New York City’s weather forecasting castle
Feral pigs are ruining ecosystems across 35 states and hunting is making it worse
Driverless car proponents love this stat. Too bad it’s a wreck.
The weirdest things we learned this week: Two sleeps are better than one
The secret to moving this ancient sphinx? Hoverboards
The first paternity tests involved ‘blood vibration.’ They didn’t work.
The weirdest thing we learned this week: werewolf tomatoes and overdosing on placebos with Wendy Zukerman
The king behind Machu Picchu built his legacy in stone
The increase in Everest deaths may have nothing to do with crowds or waiting
By destroying this female pharaoh’s legacy, her successor preserved it forever
Psychologists once linked autism to schizophrenia—and blamed moms for both
Before there was a periodic table, there was chaos
Thomas Midgley, Jr. may have been the most environmentally disastrous person of all time
Searching in vein: a history of artificial blood
The weirdest things we learned this week: Rats with fetishes and America’s first banana
You know nothing. Meet the real John Snow.
The weirdest things we learned this week: Blood-thirsty Bambi and 12-foot-tall birds
The weirdest things we learned this week: you can mummify yourself to death and Disney is full of military tech
The weirdest things we learned this week: animals used to stand trial and apples kept doctors from killing you
There’s a reason England was able to harness geniuses like Isaac Newton
Old stone walls hold secrets to Earth’s wandering magnetic north
The weirdest things we learned this week: 40,000 vanishing pigeons and the science of poodle haircuts