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Smart News / Smart News History & Archaeology

Reconstruction of the Tham Lod woman who lived 13,600 years ago

New Research

Researchers Work to Take the Bias Out Of Facial Reconstruction

Instead of relying on European-centric data sets, researchers used a global database to help image a 13,600-year-old woman from Thailand

This illustration from The Murders in the Rue Morgue portrays Dupin, the first literary 'genius detective,' questioning a suspect.

Without Edgar Allan Poe, We Wouldn’t Have Sherlock Holmes

C. Auguste Dupin, Poe’s main character, was the first genius detective

John Adams's official presidential portrait, painted circa 1792 by John Turnbull.

John Adams Was the United States’ First Ambassador as Well as Its Second President

Adams’s house in the Hague was the first-ever U.S. Embassy

Men liberated from concentration camp, 1945

Trending Today

Sealed Files of the United Nations War Crimes Commission Will Finally See Light of Day

The massive archive has already revealed that war crimes charges against Hitler were drawn up as early as 1944

Later Stone Age paintings

New Research

New Technique Shows San Rock Art Is 5,000 Years Old

Using a highly refined form of carbon dating, researchers were able to date the pigments in art in Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa

Thebes is the burial place of seemingly countless Egyptian royals and noblemen.

Cool Finds

Mummies and More Than 1,000 Statues Found in Egyptian Tomb

The treasure was buried near Luxor

This gold and red miter greeted builders when they discovered an unexpected tomb in St. Mary-at-Lambeth.

Cool Finds

Builders Find Remains of Five Archbishops of Canterbury

Turns out the vault in which they were buried wasn’t destroyed by flood after all

Paul Revere gets all the credit, but he had a little help from his friends.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and Some Other Guys

The midnight ride wasn’t so much a solo operation as it was a relay

The City Palace of Jaipur was designed with vastu shastra ideals

Ancient Architectural Science is Coming to a Renowned Indian Engineering School

Principles of alignment with the sun and magnetic fields in vastu shastra stretch back 8,000 years

A souvenir program from the 1925 Woman's World's Fair in Chicago.

A Look Back at the 1925 Woman’s World Fair

After the success of the Chicago World’s Fair, women made their own event

In 19th century England, women often had fewer legal protections than animals, even in cases involving murder.

“Are Women Animals?” Asked One 19th-Century Letter Writer

If women couldn’t have the rights of full human beings, “An Earnest Englishwoman” asked, could they at least have as many legal protections as animals?

Jackie, the second MGM "Leo the Lion," was recorded in 1928.

The Story of Hollywood’s Most Famous Lion

Actually, there have been five of them

Ireland May End Its Historic Good Friday Alcohol Ban

The 1927 prohibition restricted the sale of booze on Good Friday, Christmas Day and St. Patrick’s Day

Four Paws coordinated the rescue mission to bring Simba and Lula to safety.

Last Surviving Animals of Mosul Zoo Transported to Safety

Lula the bear and Simba the lion have been evacuated to a wildlife shelter in Jordan

This 1898 photograph shows two children holding hands during the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. 

The Curious History of the White House Easter Egg Roll

Thousands of families enter the lottery each year to take part in this White House tradition

The "Black Sunday" dust storm was 1,000 miles long and lasted for hours. It blacked out the sky, killed animals, and even blinded a man.

This 1000-Mile Long Storm Showed the Horror of Life in the Dust Bowl

In the American history of extreme weather events, ‘Black Sunday’ sticks out

Many of the records from MKUltra have been destroyed, but 8,000 pages of records were discovered in 1977.

What We Know About the CIA’s Midcentury Mind-Control Project

Project MKUltra began on this day in 1953 and continued for years

"Wing," "coin" and "toil" are all words you can play in any Scrabble game. "Biten," however, is not legal.

The Tournament Scrabble Dictionary Contains More Than A Hundred Slurs

One woman first raised the issue of the Scrabble dictionary containing offensive words in the 1990s

The Mark Strand Theater in 1914. See more images of the luxurious movie palaces at the Library of Congress website.

Movie Palaces Let Everyday Americans Be Royalty

They were an important part of the studio system that flourished until the late 1940s

Sergei Korolev was technically still a political prisoner when he began working on the Soviet rocket program.

The First Manned Space Flight Was the Rocket Designer’s Victory as Much as Yuri Gagarin’s

Sergei Korolev designed the entire Soviet rocket program. But nobody knew his name until after he died

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