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History

President Joe Biden speaks at a ceremony to create a 53,804-acre national monument in the mountains of Colorado.

Biden Declares His First National Monument at Colorado’s Camp Hale

Once home to the Ute Tribes, the site later became a military training base for the skiing soldiers who fought in World War II

Moai statues on Easter Island

Fire Irreversibly Damages Easter Island Statues

The isolated island is home to hundreds of the mysterious monuments

A facial reconstruction of a 17-year-old Stone Age woman

Art Meets Science

Facial Reconstruction Shows What This Stone Age Woman May Have Looked Like

Researchers found her skull in 1881, mistakingly believing it belonged to a man

A different page from the Beauvais Missal, a manuscript created in the late 13th century

Cool Finds

Man Pays $75 for Medieval Text That Could Be Worth $10,000

He spotted the page from the 13th-century Beauvais Missal at an estate sale in Maine

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Whose Database Identified Thousands of Enslaved Laborers, Has Died at 93

Searching through forgotten records, she collected data on more than 100,000 individuals

A mannequin named after Arturo Campos is headed into space on NASA's now-postponed Artemis 1 mission.

How Artemis 1 Honors an Apollo 13 Hero—and a Champion for Diversity in Space

A mannequin that will orbit the moon is named for Arturo Campos, a Mexican-American electrical engineer who worked on several NASA missions

Tourists visit the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in 2020.

Archaeologists Call on Unesco to Protect the Hagia Sophia

The sixth-century site has suffered increased vandalism and damage in recent years

A monument of civil rights pioneer Elizabeth Freeman in Sheffield, Massachusetts

Untold Stories of American History

How an Enslaved Woman Took Her Freedom to Court

A new statue honors Elizabeth Freeman, who argued against slavery in a Massachusetts legal case

Pauline Menczer

The Untold Stories of Surfing’s Trailblazing Women

The documentary ‘Girls Can’t Surf’ examines the sexism women surfers faced in the 1980s and ‘90s

Australia is home to roughly 200 million rabbits, which are not native to the country and damage crops and ecosystems. 

How Two Dozen Rabbits Started an Ecological Invasion in Australia

The country’s “most serious pests” can be traced to one shipment from England in 1859, study shows

James Lovelock sits with one of his early inventions, a Gas Chromatography device that measures molecules in the atmosphere.

Remembering James Lovelock, Whose ‘Gaia Theory’ Shaped Our Understanding of Global Warming

The British scientist and inventor who said Earth is a self-regulating system died earlier this summer on his 103rd birthday

Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees bats during a game against Baltimore at Yankee Stadium in 1960.

Rare Mickey Mantle Baseball Card Could Sell for $10 Million

The mint-condition copy could become one of the most expensive baseball cards ever sold at auction

City officials took down the plaque on August 8.

Denver Removes Plaque Inaccurately Describing Anti-Chinese Riot of 1880

The historical marker contained a number of falsehoods about the Mile High City’s first race riot

Archaeologists Wade Catts and Dana Linck with historian Jennifer Janofsky at the excavation site

Archaeologists Uncover Remains of 13 Hessian Soldiers at Revolutionary War Battlefield

The discovery came as a surprise to the team at New Jersey’s Red Bank Battlefield Park

Only about a dozen first printings of the Constitution are known to exist.

After Selling for $43 Million, Rare Copy of the Constitution Goes on Display

The new exhibition explores diverse interpretations of the document’s founding values

Archaeologists carefully brush away dirt from the skeleton.

Archaeologists Uncover Rare Human Skeleton at Waterloo

The bones were discovered in a ditch near a former field hospital

Jim Thorpe in 1912

Jim Thorpe’s 1912 Olympic Gold Medals Are Finally Reinstated

Officials removed the Native American athlete’s victories from Olympic records in 1913

This copy of the First Folio is one of fewer than 20 in private hands.

399-Year-Old Copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio Could Fetch $2.5 Million at Auction

Without the printed collection, many of the playwright’s most iconic works could have been lost to history

The U.S.S.R. sent legions of “liquidators” to clean up in the aftermath of the meltdown. 

Past and Presence

Footage Shows How Daily Life Didn’t Change After Chernobyl—and the Cover-Up’s Toxic Aftermath

A new documentary shows how the disaster transformed—and endangered—those who lived near the nuclear plant

A group of Chinchorro mummies, dated between 5000 B.C.E. and 3000 B.C.E.

Cool Finds

Can the World’s Oldest Mummies Survive Climate Change and Other Threats in the Coming Decades?

Up to 7,000 years old, the mummified remains are treasured by local residents

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