A Viking-age woven band of silk displays patterns in silver thread discovered to be Arabic script

New Research

Did Vikings Bury Their Dead in Clothing Bearing the Arabic Word for “Allah”?

While contact between Vikings and Muslim cultures is well documented, the interpretation of the 10th-century burial cloth has been called into question

The Cardiff Giant, posed with a branch tastefully obscuring his genitals.

The Cardiff Giant Was Just a Big Hoax

Even though it didn’t really look much like a petrified person, spectacle-seekers flocked to view it

Mark Twain's love of cats pervaded his literature as well as his writing habits.

Mark Twain Liked Cats Better Than People

Who wouldn’t?

Cool Finds

Footage Recalls the Night Madison Square Garden Filled With Nazis

A short documentary shows the 20,000-strong rally held by the Nazi-supporting German-American Bund in 1939

Trending Today

Five Things You Didn’t Know About the Boy Scouts of America

The Boy Scouts will begin admitting girls next year, just one of many changes the organization has undergone over the years

Gardener Rob Gimpel harvests cabbage from the commemorative War Garden.

Cool Finds

A Century After WWI, a Victory Garden Sows Seeds of Remembrance

The Library of Congress is playing host to heirloom vegetables and traditional growing methods that date back to 1917

A transcription of 95-foot-long inscription written in Luwian has been translated for the first time since its 1878 discovery

Scholar Deciphers 3,200-Year-Old Inscription That Could Shed Light on the “Sea People”

But the Luwian language text’s unproven provenance calls its authenticity into question

Eight hundred pounds of dynamite exploding.

The Man Who Invented Nitroglycerin Was Horrified By Dynamite

Alfred Nobel–yes, that Nobel–commercialized it, but inventor Asciano Sobrero thought nitroglycerin was too destructive to be useful

Restoration Uncovers Four Figures Hidden in 17th-Century Painting

The discovery sheds new light on the painting’s anti-Catholic message

A plantation kitchen in Georgia in 1880.

These Were the First Cookbooks Published By Black People in America

These cookbooks and domestic guides offer historians a window into the experiences and tastes of black Americans in the 1800s

A man uses a mobile phone to photograph flowers placed on the names of concentration camps during the annual ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Thursday, April 12, 2018.

Reconstructed Auschwitz Letter Reveals Horrors Endured by Forced Laborer

Marcel Nadjari buried his letter hoping it would one day reach his family

A residential school in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories.

Records of Residential School Abuse Can Be Destroyed, Canadian Supreme Court Rules

The federal government wanted to retain the documents, but survivors said they were promised confidentiality

This March 1843 portrait, taken in Washington, D.C., is the oldest known original photo of a U.S. president.

See the Earliest-Known Photograph of a U.S. President at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018

The museum recently acquired the 1843 daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams at the Sotheby’s photographs auction

The White House kitchen in the 1890s.

How Eleanor Roosevelt and Henrietta Nesbitt Transformed the White House Kitchen

The kitchen was new, but by all accounts it didn’t help the cooking

H. J. Heinz started a condiment empire. His savvy marketing helped.

There Never Were 57 Varieties of Heinz Ketchup

The ‘57’ doesn’t actually refer to anything

Trending Today

Virtually Explore a World War II Shipwreck in 360 Degrees

High-resolution video and 3D scanning brings the SS Thistlegorm to armchair archaeologists everywhere

Cool Finds

Canoe Churned up by Irma May Date to the 1600s

Radiocarbon dating shows the dugout canoe found in Cocoa, Florida, has a 50 percent chance of being from 1640 to 1680

TKTK

The Sweet Story of the Berlin Candy Bomber

Gail Halvorsen’s efforts made children happy but they also provided the U.S. military with an opportunity

A mid-century Band-Aid tin.

Get Stuck on Band-Aid History

Small injuries are a commonplace problem, but before the Band-Aid, protecting papercuts and other such wounds was a huge hassle

The British Navy was a big deal in the 1700s.

Jane Squire and the Longitude Wars

The sixteenth-century debate over how to determine longitude had a lot of participants—and one woman

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