Smart News History & Archaeology

Workers removed a statue of enslaver Robert Milligan in 2020. Eventually, the new monument will be located nearby.

New Monument in London Will Honor Victims of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

After removing a statue of an enslaver in 2020, the city aims to tell a new story

The coin was one of 29 antiquities returned to Greece

Rare Gold Coin Celebrating Julius Caesar's Death Returned to Greece

Minted in 42 B.C.E., the looted coin broke auction records in 2020 when it sold for $4.2 million

A view of the more than 2,000 mummified ram skulls found at the temple in Abydos

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Discover 2,000 Mummified Ram Skulls in Temple of Ramses II

The skulls were likely left as offerings about 1,000 years after the pharaoh's death

Ulysses S. Grant’s 1872 brush with the law marked the first and so far only time a United States president has been arrested while in office. Pictured: Grant with his racehorse Cincinnati

History of Now

When President Ulysses S. Grant Was Arrested for Speeding in a Horse-Drawn Carriage

The sitting commander in chief insisted the Black police officer who cited him not face punishment for doing his duty

Hart Island, New York City's public cemetery—and the nation's largest—will soon become a park.

The Island Where New York City Buries Its Unclaimed Dead Is Becoming a Park

More than one million people have been buried on Hart Island, which will open to visitors later this year

Swahili people maintained matrilineal family burial gardens such as this one in Faza, Kenya.

Ancient DNA Confirms the Origin Story of the Swahili People

Medieval individuals in the coastal East African civilization had almost equal parts African and Asian ancestry, a new study finds

Researchers think old masters like Sandro Botticelli, who painted Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, may have mixed egg into their oil paints to alter certain qualities.

Art Meets Science

Why Did Old Masters Use Eggs in Oil Paintings?

A new study explores how artists may have added yolk to alter the properties of their paints

A portrait of Minerva Parker Nichols

Women Who Shaped History

History Forgot Minerva Parker Nichols, the Country's First Solo Woman Architect

A new exhibition celebrates the pioneering designer, who opened her own practice in the late 1880s

York resident Luke Budworth has covered the 17th-century paintings with replicas in order to preserve the originals.

Cool Finds

Kitchen Renovation Reveals 400-Year-Old Paintings in English Apartment

The two nine-foot paintings depict scenes from a 17th-century book of poetry

A sunet behind the mountains in what is now the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada

Biden Designates Two New National Monuments

In total, the protected areas across Nevada and Texas encompass 514,000 acres of public lands

New York City's Flatiron Building is wedged between Fifth Avenue and Broadway.

New York City's Iconic Flatiron Building Sells for $190 Million at Auction

The landmark hasn't been up for public auction since the Great Depression, when it sold for $100,000

A woman throws flowers on the boxes containing human remains at Waldfriedhof cemetery.

Berlin Holds Funeral for Bone Fragments Linked to Nazi Research

Discovered in 2014, the remains of at least 54 victims were buried at a ceremony this week

One of the scrolls carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

You Could Win $1 Million by Deciphering These Ancient Roman Scrolls

The Herculaneum scrolls have remained unreadable since their discovery in 1750, but researchers hope to change that

Dancers in Ukrainian Dress by Edgar Degas

The Met Is the Latest Museum to Reclassify Russian Art as Ukrainian

Amid the Russian invasion, museums are grappling with how to identify artists connected to Ukraine

More than two million people visit Chichén Itzá in Mexico each year.

Mexico's Chichén Itzá Is Getting a New Museum

Officials hope the new facility will attract an influx of tourists arriving on the controversial Maya Train

The ruins of structures in the newly discovered town on Siniyah Island

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Find the Persian Gulf's First Known Pearling Town

Located 30 miles north of Dubai, the settlement dates to the sixth century C.E.

Rome's Pantheon was built around 27 B.C.E.

Rome's Pantheon Will Start Charging an Entrance Fee

The 2,000-year-old structure is Italy's most visited cultural site, attracting millions of tourists each year

An aerial view of the ongoing efforts to reconstruct Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral, pictured in June 2021

Cool Finds

The 2019 Notre-Dame Fire Revealed Iron Staples Holding the Cathedral Together

The Paris landmark is the first known Gothic cathedral to use iron in this way, researchers say

Nina Simone's childhood home in Tryon, North Carolina

Venus Williams Is Joining a New Push to Restore Nina Simone's Childhood Home

The singer-songwriter learned to play the piano in the 650-square-foot house

A screenshot of an interactive walkthrough of the Hantan River in Korea

See Google Street View Images of Korean Demilitarized Zone

Established in 1953, the off-limits area has become a haven for plants and wildlife

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