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Stories from Sarah Kuta

The coin features the bust of Honorius on one side. The other side depicts a person holding a banner or flag with a cross on it.

This Mysterious Gold Pendant Featuring a Misspelled Inscription Is an Early Medieval Imitation of a Roman Coin

A metal detectorist in England discovered the unusual piece of jewelry, which was likely made in the late fifth or early sixth century C.E.

Jim Sichko, a Catholic priest from Lexington, Kentucky, visited Pope Francis in May and asked him to sign two bottles of bourbon for charity. 

Pope Francis Signed These Two Bottles of Bourbon to Support Charities in Kentucky

Earlier this year, a priest from Lexington brought the spirits to the Vatican to get the pope’s autograph. They will soon be sold at auction, where they could raise up to $20,000

Researchers hypothesize that this footprint was made by a member of the hominin species Paranthropus boisei.

Footprints Reveal Two Early Human Species Walked the Same Lakeshore in Kenya 1.5 Million Years Ago

A new, “mind-blowing” discovery reveals evidence that Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei stepped at the same site within days—or hours—of each other

A man spotted the scar while looking at Google Earth satellite imagery earlier this year.

A Man Noticed a Strange Shape on the Ground on Google Earth. It Turned Out to Be the Mark of an Undetected Tornado

Geoscientists in Australia suggest a strong tornado swept across the Nullarbor Plain in November 2022 and made the 6.8-mile-long scar on the landscape—without anyone noticing

A 2019 drought allowed researchers to excavate some of the typically waterlogged canals.

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Canals Used to Trap Fish in Belize 4,000 Years Ago

Pre-Maya hunter-gatherers built the system in Central America in response to a drought between 2200 and 1900 B.C.E., according to a new study

Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay is one of the sites where telephone cables were recently removed from.

Crews Remove Miles of Abandoned, Lead-Coated Telephone Cables From the Bottom of Lake Tahoe

The cables have been resting on the lakebed for decades, raising fears from environmentalists and residents about possible lead contamination

The letter inside the glass bottle was dated September 4, 1892.

Read the 132-Year-Old Message in a Bottle Found Hidden Inside the Walls of a Scottish Lighthouse

Engineers discovered the mysterious missive while working on repairs at Corsewall Lighthouse last month. Now, they plan to write their own note for future generations to find

Jools Lebron's viral social media video about being "very demure, very mindful" while getting ready for work led to a massive increase in the use of the word "demure."

‘Demure’ Is Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2024

The term’s popularity skyrocketed after content creator Jools Lebron used it in a now-viral TikTok video, in which she described being “very demure, very mindful”

Bottlenose dolphins are highly social and typically live in pods.

A Solo Dolphin Is Chattering Away Off Denmark’s Coast—Is He Talking to Himself?

Marine biologists are perplexed by the lone bottlenose dolphin’s vocalizations, because some resemble sounds typically used for communication

Divers recovered rye seeds from the James R. Bentley shipwreck in Lake Huron.

Scientists Are Trying to Make Whiskey Using Rye Seeds That Were Submerged in a Lake Huron Shipwreck for Nearly 150 Years

Divers, distillers and researchers recently recovered grain from the “James R. Bentley,” a wooden schooner that sank during a storm in 1878

Gus did not hesitate to belly flop into the ocean.

Gus, the Young Emperor Penguin Who Made a Surprise Appearance in Australia, Is Now Heading Home

Wildlife caretakers released the bird into the Southern Ocean after he’d put on some weight and regained his strength

Makenzie Van Eyk (second from right) holds the message in a bottle that she wrote 26 years ago. Roland St. Pierre (far left) was her teacher at the time. Her daughter Scarlet (second from left) and son Huxley (far right) are enrolled in the same school she attended.

A Little Girl Dropped a Message in a Bottle Into a Lake. Her Daughter’s Classmate Found It 26 Years Later

Makenzie Van Eyk wrote the letter as part of a class project in 1998, when she was in fourth grade. Recently, the note was discovered by a boy who goes to school with her daughter—who is now in fourth grade herself

Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian sold for $6.2 million at auction.

That Viral Banana Duct-Taped to a Wall? It Just Sold for $6.2 Million

Maurizio Cattelan’s perishable piece soared above the pre-auction estimate of $1.5 million and was the subject of an intense bidding battle at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday

Manatees have rebounded since the 1970s but still face myriad threats.

Archaeologists Piece Together the Origin Story of Florida’s Manatees, Revealing They Were Once Tourists

A new study suggests manatees weren’t permanent residents in the Sunshine State until around the 20th century, drawn in by a warming climate and construction of power plants

One side of the coin is stamped with a simple "NE" to represent New England, while the other side features Roman numerals to denote its value.

American Colonists Minted This Humble Silver Coin in 1652. It Just Sold for $2.52 Million

Settlers in Massachusetts needed cash, but England wouldn’t send any. So, they created their own mint in Boston and began making coins

The creature lives in the “midnight zone," an area of the ocean so deep that sunlight never reaches it.

Scientists Finally Identified This Glowing, Transparent ‘Mystery Mollusk’ After Nearly 25 Years of Puzzling

The newly described species of sea slug dwells in darkness in the ocean’s midnight zone, using a hood to capture prey with a Venus flytrap-like technique

Fat tissue, as seen here under a scanning electron micrograph, maintains a "memory" of obesity, new research suggests.

Fat Cells Retain a ‘Memory’ of Obesity, Making It Hard to Lose Weight and Keep It Off, Study Suggests

Obesity leads to DNA alterations that affect gene activity and linger after weight loss, a finding that researchers say could help reduce stigma around the disease

Sigmund Freud in the office of his Vienna home in 1930

New Exhibition Unravels Sigmund Freud’s Complex Relationship With the Women in His Life and Work

“Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists” spotlights the women who influenced the Austrian neurologist—and the field of psychoanalysis more broadly

The 300-carat necklace features 500 diamonds that likely came from India's Golconda mines.

See the Dazzling Diamond Necklace With Possible Ties to Marie Antoinette That Just Sold for $4.8 Million

Some of the gems may have featured in a royal scandal known as the “affair of the diamond necklace” that damaged the French queen’s reputation in 1785

Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs are rebounding from near-extinction in California.

Endangered Sierra Nevada Yellow-Legged Frogs Are Making a Comeback

Scientists are celebrating the recovery of the species in Yosemite National Park, where they were decimated by the introduction of non-native fish and the deadly amphibian chytrid fungus

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