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Cool Finds

Nothing Says 'I Love You' Like a Bit of Pocket Change

Victorians seduced their sweeties with "love tokens"

A member of the Ku Klux Klan holds a noose during attempts to suppress black voters in Miami, Fla., in 1939.

New Research

Lynchings Were Even More Common in the South Than Previously Thought

A group of criminal justice reformers find 700 more lynchings in the segregated South than previously recorded

A detail of one of four known existing originals of the 1297 version of the Magna Carta.

Cool Finds

An Early Copy of the Magna Carta Was Found Forgotten in an Old Scrapbook

An archivist in England stumbled upon a 715-year-old edition of the charter credited for initiating a new framework of governance

Cool Finds

Neil Armstrong Had a Secret Stash of Moon Stuff

“Lost” Apollo 11 artifacts are now found

Rosa Parks addresses a crowd in 1989 on the 25th anniversary of the signing of the civil rights legislation.

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The Library of Congress Now Has Rosa Parks’ Personal Letters

The loan of over 10,000 documents from the Civil Rights icon’s personal life reveals her complexity and inner struggles—as well as one solid pancake recipe

A Buddhist monk prays in a temple. Scientists recently discovered the mummified body of a Buddhist monk some say is in a long-term trance.

Cool Finds

Is This Mummy Dead…Or Meditating?

Some Buddhists claim this well-preserved monk is in a deep meditative state

An Enigma deciphering machine from the German navy

Cool Finds

Notes From Alan Turing’s Code-Breaking Days Found in Roof Insulation

The rare code-breaking documents include sheets used to calculate settings for the machine working on "Enigma"

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

Trending Today

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

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