Preening automaton

Cool Finds

This Robotic Silver Swan Has Fascinated Fans for Nearly 250 Years

It preens, fishes and impresses

Rachel Carson in 1962.

Rachel Carson Wrote Silent Spring (Partly) Because of the Author of Stuart Little

The book was a turning point for the environmental movement

Vera Lynn performing a lunchtime concert at a munitions factory in 1941.

WWII Songstress Croons Her Way to Age 100 With a New Album

Dame Vera Lynn “the Forces’ Sweetheart” will make the history books with the release

Appert devised the canning process using that old standby, trial-and-error.

The Father of Canning Knew His Process Worked, But Not Why It Worked

Nicolas Appert was trying to win a hefty prize offered by the French army

This photograph of Abigail Scott Dunway features the words "Yours for Liberty,"—the phrase she always used when she signed her name.

Cool Finds

This Hell-Raising Suffragist’s Name Will Soon Grace an Oregon Hotel

Abigail Scott Duniway staged a lifelong fight for women’s rights

A man administers a security screening at the Clinton Engineer Works, part of the Manhattan Project.

Lie Detectors Don’t Work as Advertised and They Never Did

Barred from use in U.S. court, lie detectors are still used today in other parts of the legal system

The President, one of only three Inner Circle members who are allowed to handle Punxsutawney Phil, holds him aloft during ceremonies in 2013.

Meet the Inner Circle That Runs Groundhog Day

They’ve been holding the ceremony in Gobbler’s Knob every year since 1887

Portrait of Edmonia Lewis by Henry Rocher

Google Doodle Sculpts a Tribute to Pioneering Artist Edmonia Lewis

Celebrate the first day of Black History Month by getting to know the 19th-century sculptor

Just call it "the house on Pooh corner."

Cool Finds

The House Where ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ Was Written Is for Sale

The 9.5-acre estate was once home to Christopher Robin and A.A. Milne

Leila Denmark practiced medicine until age 103 and lived to 114.

One of America’s First Female Pediatricians Saved Lives for 74 Years

Dr. Leila Denmark lived to be 114, and practiced medicine for three quarters of a century

A 1925 pastel portrait of Hughes that belongs to the Smithsonian.

How Langston Hughes’s Dreams Inspired MLK’s

Langston Hughes wrote about dreams at a time when racism meant that black people’s dreams were silenced

A guard tower at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where tens of thousands were murdered.

Trending Today

Poland Is Searching For the Last Living Auschwitz Guards

New database lays out details of the SS guards and commanders who carried out some of history’s most terrible crimes

The limestone carving of an aurochs

New Research

Dig This: Researchers Found a 38,000-Year-Old Engraving in France

Excavated from a rock shelter, the image of an aurochs covered in dots was made by the Aurignacians, the earliest group of modern humans in Europe

Among other necessary items, the list includes "greenfish," a "fireshovel" and two dozen pewter spoons.

Seventeenth-Century Shopping List Discovered Under Floorboards of Historic English Home

Penned in 1633, the “beautifully written” list hints at household life 400 years ago

The definition of "boy scout" just expanded to include transgender kids who identify as male.

Trending Today

Boy Scouts Will Allow Transgender Children to Enroll in Boys-Only Programs

The decision is thanks to an 8 year old

Part of a 1949 ad for Scotch tape, which was billed as a "thrifty" way to make repairs around the home.

Scotch Tape Can Create X-Rays, and More You Didn’t Know About The Sticky Stuff

People have used it to repair everything from curtains to ceilings

Balloon prints like this one, of the Great Nassau “enable us to share some sense of the excitement that gripped those watching their fellow beings rise into the sky for the first time,” writes Tom D. Crouch of the National Air and Space Museum.

A Picture History of One of the World’s Greatest Hot Air Balloons

Designed by Charles Green, the Great Nassau was big enough to capture the imaginations of an entire country

Brunhilde Pomsel in 2016.

One of the Last Links to the Inner Nazi Circle Dies at 106

Brunhilde Pomsel worked with Joseph Goebbels until the final days of the Third Reich

Douglas Engelbart rehearsing for his 1968 computer demo.

In One 1968 Presentation, This Inventor Shaped Modern Computing

Douglas Engelbart’s career was about seeing the possibilities of what computing could do for humanity

There are few images of the top-secret map room. This one, taken at the end of WWII, shows Army Chief Warrant Officer Albert Cornelius standing before a map of Europe.

Take a Rare Look Inside FDR’s WWII Information Center: The Map Room

Long before Google Earth, this was how the president saw the world

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