A curatorial assistant found the wood fragments in a misfiled cigar box bearing the image of Egypt's old flag.

Cool Finds

Missing Great Pyramid Artifact Found in Cigar Box in Scotland

The wood fragments—among just three items ever taken from the Giza tomb—date to the fourth millennium B.C.

This rare Anglo Saxon cross spent more than 1,000 years buried in a Scottish field. Left: the cross pre-conservation, and right: the cross mid-cleaning

Cool Finds

Freed of 1,000 Years of Grime, Anglo-Saxon Cross Emerges in Stunning Detail

Conservation revealed the artifact, discovered with Scotland’s Galloway Hoard, as an example of intricate Viking-era metalwork

Arranged in symbolically significant ways with no clear hierarchy, the villages’ circular layouts may reflect their Indigenous inhabitants’ conceptions of the cosmos.

Cool Finds

These Amazonian Villages Were Laid Out Like Clock Faces

Scientists used LiDAR to investigate the ruins of 14th- to 18th-century Indigenous communities in Brazil

The bones likely belong to people sacrificed during the reign of Ahuízotl, eighth king of the Aztecs.

Cool Finds

The Aztecs Constructed This Tower Out of Hundreds of Human Skulls

Researchers in Mexico City recently discovered a new section of a macabre late 15th-century structure

A family in southern England found the trove of 64 coins while gardening.

Cool Finds

Gardeners Unearth Coins Inscribed With Initials of Henry VIII’s First Three Wives

The find is one of more than 47,000 recorded by the U.K.’s Portable Antiquities Scheme in 2020

The mosaic reflects a decline in craftsmanship but is still intricately made.

Cool Finds

Stunning Mosaic Found in England Shows Some Lived in Luxury During ‘Dark Ages’

The fifth-century artwork suggests that the British Isles experienced a gradual, not sudden, decline following the Romans’ departure

Notre-Dame's Grand Organ, as seen before the April 2019 fire

Inside the Monumental Effort to Restore Notre-Dame’s Grand Organ

Workers spent four months painstakingly dismantling the musical instrument, which is only set to sound again in 2024

Johns Hopkins, founder of the Baltimore university that bears his name, enslaved at least four unnamed men in 1850. Pictured behind Hopkins is the 1850 "slave schedule" with his name (#33, circled in blue) and the enslaved individuals' ages.

New Research

Long Heralded as an Abolitionist, Johns Hopkins Enslaved People, Records Show

The Baltimore university that bears his name announced new research that “shattered” perceptions of the Quaker entrepreneur

An ice core extracted at El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico connects water collection to periods of droughts.

Cool Finds

Ancestral Puebloans Survived Droughts by Collecting Water From Icy Lava Tubes

In ancient New Mexico, cold air in cavernous spaces carved out by lava flows preserved blocks of ice

Ranavalona III succeeded her great-aunt, Ranavalona II, in 1883.

The Little-Known Story of Madagascar’s Last Queen, Ranavalona III

Artifacts linked to the royal are headed home following their purchase at auction by the African island’s government

Submissions will be included in an online exhibition, “Reclamation: Recipes, Remedies, and Ritual,” set to open in January 2021.

Your Cherished Family Recipes Could Be Featured in a Museum Exhibition

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is asking the public to share recipes that document unique family histories

The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg looted books across occupied Europe. Pictured here is a room full of stolen texts in Riga, Latvia.

New Digital Project Details 150 Belgian Libraries Looted by the Nazis

During WWII, a special ideological unit stole some 250,000 to 300,000 books for research and propaganda purposes

U.S. Air Force Captain Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound in this airplane, the Bell X-1, on October 14, 1947. The aircraft is currently housed at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

Remember Chuck Yeager by Exploring the Plane He Flew to Break the Sound Barrier

In 1947, the pilot—who died Monday at age 97—made history by flying the Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound

Newton held unconventional religious beliefs and dabbled in alchemy and the occult.

Isaac Newton Thought the Great Pyramid Held the Key to the Apocalypse

Papers sold by Sotheby’s document the British scientist’s research into the ancient Egyptians and the Bible

A team of divers found this rusted—but still recognizable—Enigma cipher machine at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The Nazis used the device to encode secret military messages during WWII.

Cool Finds

Divers Discover Nazi Enigma Machine Thrown Into the Baltic Sea During WWII

German forces used the device—likely cast into the water to avoid falling into Allied hands—to encode military messages

Originally intended to serve as a luxury hotel and casino, the building was turned into an orphanage after Abdul Hamid II banned gambling in the Ottoman Empire.

Preservationists Rally to Save Abandoned Casino-Turned-Orphanage in Istanbul

The enormous, 122-year-old structure—one of Europe’s largest wooden buildings—is close to collapsing

The Vale of York Hoard, a major trove of Viking artifacts discovered in 2007 in North Yorkshire. The hoard—likely buried around 920 A.D.—included 617 silver coins, a Frankish silver cup and Viking jewelry.

To Protect Its Rare Artifacts, the U.K. Proposes Revised Definition of ‘Treasure’

New standards will ensure significant archaeological finds remain publicly accessible for study and enjoyment, the government says

The Temperance Society objected to the card's inclusion of a child sipping wine.

The First Commercially Printed Christmas Card Scandalized Victorian England

Two rare copies of the 1843 greeting card, which depicts a child sipping from a glass of wine, are now up for auction

Roosevelt exchanged lively correspondence with all kinds of people for much of his life.

Library of Congress Seeks Volunteers to Transcribe Letters to Theodore Roosevelt

The campaign is part of a broader crowdsourcing effort aimed at making archival materials more accessible to the public

Trench fever came to prominence during World War I, but new research suggests that the disease afflicted people long before the 20th century.

Before WWI, Trench Fever Plagued the Ancient Romans and Napoleonic Soldiers

Long associated with the Great War, the disease actually dates back at least 2,000 years, a new study suggests

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