Smart News History & Archaeology

Crashed Costa Concordia Is Still Sitting in the Water in Italy

It's been 19 months since the crash, but the ship is still in the water

Discoveries by European explorers that didn’t involve claiming land where people were already living.

These Are All the Places That Europeans Actually Discovered

Of all the places you think were discovered by Europeans, how many were actually discovered by Europeans?

The Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest known board games, but newly discovered pieces may be even older.

These Complex, Beautiful Board Game Pieces Are 5,000 Years Old

With pigs and pyramids and dog-shaped tokens, what kind of game might they have been playing?

Just a year ago these people were celebrating Morsi’s election.

Three Things to Know About the Bloodshed in Egypt

Hundreds of people were killed in Egypt yesterday. Here's your primer

An ornamental copy of the Declaration of Independence

America’s Founders Were Scarily Young on July 4, 1776

How old were famous Revolutionary War figures on July 4, 1776?

An archeologist clearing debris away from an inscription on the newly discovered frieze.

Archaeologist Found This Huge, Beautiful Mayan Frieze Completely Intact in Guatemala

An incredibly well-preserved 26-by-8-feet frieze may shed light on Mayan political history around AD 590

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Cracking the Code of the Human Genome

The End of the Henrietta Lacks Saga?

The U.S. National Institutes of Health created an agreement with the Lacks family regarding access to the HeLa genome

In 1916, Georgia Tech Beat Cumberland College, 222 to 0

The story of the game is a bit more delicious than just an insane beat down. It involves revenge, baseball, clerical errors and thousands of dollars

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What Queen Elizabeth II Would Have Said If Nuclear War Started in the 1980s

Undelivered speeches give a glimpse into alternate realities that never came to pass

The coffin-within-a-coffin at Greyfriars

Mysterious Coffin-in-a-Coffin Found Under the Same Parking Lot as Richard III

The only marker on the coffin lid is a cross, but the person must have been of high social status to warrant such an elaborate burial

What’s left of a former residential school in British Columbia

Canada’s Forgotten Experiments on Malnourished Indigenous Kids

During this period in history, the Canadian government strongly promoted a reeducation program of sorts for indigenous children

The mushroom cloud produced by the “Fat Man” bomb from the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.

Here’s What Nagasaki Would Have Looked Like If the Tsar Bomba Had Replaced ‘Fat Man’

A Google Earth add-on helps you understand the strength of the world's nuclear arsenal

Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa

Archaeologists Just Found the Biblical King David’s Palace. Maybe.

A large, fortified building was found outside Jerusalem. Some archaeologists claim it to be the palace of the biblical King David

A spiral well at El Brujo, near where the mummy was found

Archaeologists Find an Unusual Victim of Human Sacrifice in Peru

The young woman was either poisoned or strangled with a cord, then dumped into a pit

After 163 Years, India Sends Its Last Telegram

Thousands crammed into India's telegram offices on Sunday as the 163 year old service shuts down for good

The original Smokey the Bear ad

It’s a Good Thing We Have Smokey: These 1940s Fire Prevention Ads Are Something Else

Replacing racially charged and aggressive World War II imagery, Smokey the Bear is an iconic character

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Today in 1948, the U.S. Air Force Accepted Its First Female Member

The first recruit to the Women in the Air Force (known as WAF) was Esther Blake who enlisted on the first day it was even possible for women to do so

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The Creator of the Computer Mouse Never Received Any Royalties

Though Engelbart revolutionized computing in 1967 with the invention of the mouse, he never received any royalties from his creation

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This July 4th, Celebrate Two Million Years of Grilling

The advent of open fire cooking began with Homo erectus

Happy 315th Birthday to the Steam Engine

Three hundred and fifteen years ago today James Savery's patented the steam engine

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