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Smart News / Smart News History & Archaeology

Nine letters written by Barack Obama from 1982 to 1984 are being made available to the public for the first time

Barack Obama’s Letters From Three Decades Ago

As a striving college student and recent graduate, letters by the future president depict a man coming to terms with his identity and future

Cool Finds

Stone Age Britons Feasted While Building Stonehenge

A new exhibit shows that the builders gorged on animals from as far away as Scotland

A Hybrid III model crash test dummy.

These Dummies Gave Us a Crash Course on Auto Safety

Many of your car’s safety features owe a lot to these inanimate people

President Kennedy meets with Gen. Curtis LeMay and the pilots who discovered the Cuban missiles.

JFK Faked a Cold to Get Back to Washington During the Cuban Missile Crisis

The president was in Chicago when he got the news that he needed to make a decision

In this Oct. 30, 1965, Associated Press file photo, members of the Youth Wing of the Indonesian Communist Party (Pemuda Rakjat) are watched by soldiers as they are taken to prison in Jakarta.

Declassified Records Show U.S. Knew About, Supported 1965 Massacre in Indonesia

One cable referred to the brutal transition of power as a “fantastic switch”

Egyptians bringing in the harvest

New Research

Volcanic Eruptions Could Have Spurred Revolts in Ancient Egypt

A new study comparing eruptions and uprisings looks at how volcanoes meddle with annual Nile floods

Reaching the summit of the Matterhorn made Annie Smith Peck well-known.

Three Things to Know About Pants-Wearing Mountaineer Annie Smith Peck

Peck wasn’t wealthy and her family, who did have money, didn’t approve of her globe-trotting, mountain-climbing, pants-wearing lifestyle

None

John Z. DeLorean Thought He Was Designing the Car of the Future

Instead its almost-instantly out-of-date styling made it a legend

Whaling captured the popular imagination.

The Real-Life Whale That Gave Moby Dick His Name

Mocha Dick had encounters with around 100 ships before he was finally killed

"Syria, Souk of Aleppo" In the Souk of Aleppo, with a Mamluk portal leading to a courtyard to the right, 2008

25 Images Capture at-Risk Heritage Sites of the Latest World Monuments Watch

The World Monuments Fund shines a light on landmarks in over 30 countries and territories that are in desperate need of conservation

Nicholas Culpeper fought against the medical establishment of the time by taking the radical action of writing in English, not Latin.

How Nicholas Culpeper Brought Medicine to the People

His 17th-century text is still in print today

C.O.R.E Demonstration for Fair Housing, August 21, 1963. Before the Fair Housing Act of 1968, a practice known as redlining limited loans to owners in minority neighborhoods which contributed to housing decay. Discrimination also prevented minorities from moving into better neighborhoods. A Department of Buildings survey in August 1963 revealed over 16,000 housing violations in a single month. Over 379 cases were turned over to the criminal court for prosecution.

The “Unlikely Historians” Who Documented America in Protest

A new exhibit showcases photos and films that have long been stowed away in a basement at New York Police Department’s headquarters

Rita Hayworth in 'Gilda.'

How Margarita Cansino Became Rita Hayworth

Hayworth navigated identity, ethnicity and transformation throughout her career

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

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