Smart News History & Archaeology

The USSR is alive and well in a bunker in Lithuania.

Cool Finds

This Fake Gulag Will Let You Pretend the Soviets Are Still in Power

Barking dogs, harsh guards and brutal imprisonment in a bunker where the USSR never fell

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home

Cool Finds

Thomas Jefferson Conducted Early Smallpox Vaccine Trials

When an English doctor discovered a safer kind of immunity, someone had to spread the word to America

Vatican with the Tiber River and St. Peter's Basilica

New Research

Two of the Vatican’s “Ancient” Egyptian Mummies Are 19th Century Fakes

Specimens once thought to be the remains of children or animals are likely a product of the 1800’s “mummy mania”

"Young people run down a snowy hill with enthusiasm, ca. 1940" in Chicago

Cool Finds

Visit 1940s Chicago With a Film Discovered at a Garage Sale

The film, produced in around 1945, offers a thorough, fact-filled tour of the city

A skull shows evidence of trepanation, an early form of neurosurgery that called for a hole cut into the skull.

New Research

Scientists Try Out 2,300-Year-Old Brain Surgery Techniques

Experiments conducted by a Siberian research team shed light on the neurosurgical methods evident in three Iron Age skulls

Friendship Nine members Clarence Graham, Willie Thomas Massey, David Williamson Jr., James F. Wells and Willie E. McCleod (L-R) stand in front of the renamed Five & Dine diner in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on December 17, 2014

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The "Friendship 9" Who Sat At A White-Only Lunch Counter Have Been Cleared

The men who participated in a South Carolina sit-in were sentenced to 30 days hard labor in 1961

Miguel de Cervantes is best known for creating Don Quixote, a whimsical knight.

Cool Finds

Did Archaeologists Just Find Miguel de Cervantes, 400 Years After His Death?

A centuries-old crypt could hold the answer to the mystery of Cervantes’ missing remains

Jean Valentine, a former Bombe machine operator, shows a drum of the machine in Bletchley Park Museum in Bletchley, England.

Cool Finds

Women Were Key to WWII Code-Breaking at Bletchley Park

Female operators and mathematicians play a greater role in the history of computers and code-breaking than most realize

Cool Finds

Mostly the Old And Ill Ate Breakfast Until the Rise of the Working Man

Romans disdained the meal, few ate it in the Middle Ages, but most eat breakfast now

The naturally mummified body of Ötzi is seen in a cooling chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano.

New Research

The 61 Tattoos of Ötzi, the 5,300-Year-Old “Iceman”

Scientists have mapped the body art of one of archeology’s biggest super stars in hopes to better understand the role tattoos played in early civilization

Teens from the Njarainjari Aboriginal Community walk in the shallows of Lake Albert in Southern Australia

New Research

Australian Stories Capture 10,000-Year-Old Climate History

Aboriginal groups from coast to coast describe walking to places that are now islands

William Gillette's lost Sherlock Holmes film was an unsolved mystery—until now.

Cool Finds

Mystery Solved: Footage From a Long-Lost Silent Sherlock Holmes Is Found

William Gillette is responsible for how we see Sherlock Holmes—but the loss of his single silent film was an unsolved mystery

Cool Finds

Evidence of a Seating Plan Discovered at the Colosseum

Restoration efforts reveal the red-painted numbers that would help ancient Romans find their status-dictated seats

A stone relief carving of soldiers made in Assyria and now in the British Museum.

New Research

Ancient Assyrian Soldiers Were Haunted by War, Too

A new study finds evidence of trauma experienced by soldiers returning home from combat over 3,000 years ago

Charles Darwin statue at London’s Natural History Museum

Cool Finds

Darwin May Have Experienced Extreme Anxiety

Many attempts have been made to diagnose Darwin’s illness, here’s a well-argued possibility

Cool Finds

How to Mind Your Manners at Silent Movies

Vintage slides give an etiquette lesson to obnoxious silent movie audiences

Turing's journal was kept while he helped build the Bombe Machine, a device used to encrypt Nazi codes.

Cool Finds

Turing’s Secret Notebook Is Up for Auction

The notebooks offer a glimpse into the mind of a codebreaker

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King Tut’s Beard Fell Off...And Was Glued Back on With Epoxy

Clumsy curators won’t admit who’s behind the irreparable repair

A fragment from a copy of the Gospel of John, circa 200AD, is displayed at Sotheby's auctioneers in London. Researchers now claim to have found a gospel text that is over 100 years older.

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Papyrus Found in a Mummy Mask May Be the Oldest Known Copy of a Gospel

Questions surround the reported discovery of an ancient scrap of the Gospel of Mark

George Washington by Charles Willson Peale

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The First State of the Union Address: Way Shorter, Way Less Clapping

In his First Annual Message to Congress, George Washington outlined the country’s most pressing issues and kicked off a flexible annual tradition

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