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History

Francesco Rutelli, then Italy's culture minister, examines vases repatriated to Rome in 2007.

Acquisition Guidelines

This past March, the J. Paul Getty Museum repatriated the 2,400-year-old statue—the most recent of more than 40 objects at the museum that Italy said had been illegally removed.

The Goddess Goes Home

Following years of haggling over its provenance, a celebrated statue once identified as Aphrodite, has returned to Italy

George McClellan, with Abraham Lincoln at Antietam in 1862, took command of the Union armies but let the president wait.

November 1861: Flare Ups in the Chain of Command

As Union generals came and left, personalities clashed and Southern farmers set fire to their fields

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November Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

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Comings and Goings

To every thing there is a season

Ninety percent of Mount Rushmore was carved using dynamite.

The Making of Mount Rushmore

The 70th anniversary of the completion of the South Dakota monument prompts a look back at what it took to create it

Professor Ronald Greeley, 1939-2011

Ronald Greeley: A Gentleman and a Scholar

Some scientists are both great researchers and fine human beings. Ron Greeley was one of them

Philippa Fawcett. When she placed first in the Cambridge mathematical tripos in 1890, she forced a reassessment of nineteenth-century belief in the inferiority of the "weaker sex."

The Woman Who Bested the Men at Math

Henry Johnson and the Harlem Hellfighters in a parade up Fifth Avenue upon their return to New York in February, 1919.

Remembering Henry Johnson, the Soldier Called “Black Death”

Henry Johnson suffered 21 wounds and rescued a soldier while repelling an enemy raid in the Argonne Forest in 1918 but died 11 years later a forgotten man

Thomas Edison circa 1914

Thomas Edison’s Brief Stint As A Homemaker

The famous inventor envisioned a future of inexpensive, prefabricated concrete homes

The Turkish flag flown, and rifles used, by Gool Mohammed and Mullah Abdullah during the Battle of Broken Hill, January 1, 1915.

The Battle of Broken Hill

While Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire were fighting World War I, two Afghans opened up a second front in an Australian outback town 12,000 miles away

Picturing the World Series of the Future

After a brutal postseason, can London finally beat New York City?

'Blondin's rope ascension over Niagara River' by George Barker

The Daredevil of Niagara Falls

Charles Blondin understood the appeal of the morbid to the masses, and reveled when gamblers took bets on whether he would plunge to a watery death

Building Expectations

How do people decide what does or doesn’t look futuristic?

Port Louis, Mauritius, in the first half of the 19th century

Naval Gazing: The Enigma of Étienne Bottineau

In 1782, an unknown French engineer offered an invention better than radar: the ability to detect ships hundreds of miles away

Life in a bubble: Westinghouse advertisement

Today at War, Tomorrow in Stores

Advertisers in the 1940s promised American consumers that they would be rewarded for their wartime sacrifices on the homefront

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Edison vs. Westinghouse: A Shocking Rivalry

The inventors’ battle over the delivery of electricity was an epic power play

The lunar feature Ina, an extremely young, unusual depression that may represent a gas eruption site on the Moon.

It’s a Gas, Man!

Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivering his keynote address at MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco in 2007

Steve Jobs: Futurist, Optimist

The innovator wasn’t just this generation’s Thomas Edison, he was also its Walt Disney

"Greetings, Britons and everybody." Queen Victoria at about the time she made her Graphophone recording.

In Search of Queen Victoria’s Voice

The British monarch was present when a solicitor demonstrated one of the earliest audio recording devices. But did she really say “tomatoes”?

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