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Smart News / Smart News History & Archaeology

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

The remnant's of Kepler's supernova imaged with modern instruments.

How a 1604 Supernova Presented a Challenge to Astronomers

The supernova provided proof to Galileo, Kepler and others that the heavens were not fixed–although they were wrong about what caused the bright star

Mad cow disease, like other prion diseases, is still not fully understood.

More Than 30 Years Since Their Discovery, Prions Still Fascinate, Terrify and Mystify Us

Figuring out what they were was just the beginning of a field of research into prions and prion diseases that’s still growing

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visiting Canada's new National Holocaust Monument last week

Canada to Replace Holocaust Plaque After Uproar

The plaque dedicating the country’s new national Holocaust memorial was criticized for making no reference to Jews or anti-Semitism

Cartoonist Bil Keane in his studio in 1990.

‘Why ‘The Family Circus’ Was Always So Sentimental

Cartoonist Bil Keane landed on a formula that worked and he stuck to it

The star of this dive was the discovery of a bronze arm, mottled from centuries underwater.

Antikythera Shipwreck Yields New Cache of Treasures, Hints More May Be Buried at Site

The discovery of an ancient bronze arm is a rare archaeological find

Pumpkin spice has become completely divorced from pumpkin pie.

Even Colonial Americans Liked Pumpkin Spice

A recipe for pumpkin (or rather, “pompkin”) spice appears in America’s oldest cookbook

The late 19th and early 20th centuries were full of inventions such as this--the "Pinkert Navigating Tricycle," which was meant to be used on water.

People in the 1800s Dreamed of Bicycling on Water

Despite numerous patents, nothing really ever came of this fad

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