Though John Adams was old and ill when he died, the curious timing of his demise sparked countless unusual theories.

Other, lesser-known towns were often just as raucous as Tombstone and Deadwood. Jerome, Arizona, for example, was once called "the wickedest town in the West" because of its proliferation of bars, ...

Archaeologists in Virginia have discovered the 18th-century foundation that once held the historic Williamsburg Bray School, the oldest known schoolhouse for Black children in America. Unearthed at ...

Although many in the modern day associate the Soviet Union with Russia, it was one of the world’s largest multi-ethnic states, comprised of 15 republics. The Soviet Union’s first census, conducted in ...

Caesar’s adopted son and heir Octavian ultimately emerged victorious in the ensuing power struggles, and in 27 B.C.E., he took the new name Augustus and became Rome’s first emperor. With that, the ...

The furry creature doesn’t look quite camera-ready. Its snout is raised as if it’s sniffing the air, and its eyes are glazed and bright. It’s no wonder why the tiny California mammal appears so ...

The Ark of the Covenant is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus, when God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites to build an ark (a chest) out of “acacia wood” that is “two and a half cubits long, a ...

Orichalcum first appears in the historical record in the seventh century B.C.E. with the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite also mentions the metal. The poem reads: “On her ...

Tickling may seem like a harmless and playful act, but it actually has a long and complex history that stretches across different cultures and eras. Its ability to immobilize and cause discomfort has ...

To understand how dragons have become so pervasive, we should first look at some specific examples of cultures that believed in dragons throughout history. In China and the British Isles, for instance ...

Shortly after midnight on April 15, 1912, Harold Cottam, the telegraph operator of the RMS Carpathia, idly decided to call the RMS Titanic. His shift was over, but he wanted to alert his counterparts ...

The story of the 79 C.E. Mount Vesuvius eruption actually began about 300,000 years ago, when the volcano first began to form. In the millennia leading up to the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum ...