Smart News History & Archaeology

This man needs a makeover.

Trending Today

The Lincoln Memorial Is Getting a Makeover

The four-year restoration will cost a pretty penny

Cool Finds

This Unfinished Film Highlights the Daily Lives of Black Americans in the 1960s

'The American Negro' shares stories of black surgeons, mothers and workers

Former Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Thomas Peter Lantos (D-Calif.) and his poodle, Gigi.

Trending Today

Congress Won’t Pay For Official Portraits Anymore

The government will stop using taxpayer dollars to immortalize lawmakers in the traditional fashion

A rendering of the newly reopened Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, California.

Cool Finds

Glow to This Flickering Tribute to Neon

The past shines at the Museum of Neon Art in Southern California

This kitten, though adorable, was not one of the post office cats.

Cool Finds

A Brief History of Post Office Cats

Mail used to come with a side of meow

Michelangelo painted some of art history's greatest hands.

New Research

Michelangelo May Have Had Arthritis

Researchers used old portraits and letters to study the master's hands

Hospital Apprentices second class Ruth C. Isaacs, Katherine Horton and Inez Patterson (left to right) were the first black WAVES to enter the Hospital Corps School at National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD. Photographed March 2, 1945.

Cool Finds

Photographs Document Some of the First Black Women to Serve With the U.S. Navy

Black women were not allowed to join WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) until 1944

Cool Finds

British Monks Discovered a Curry Recipe in a 200-Year-Old Cookbook

The Portuguese brought the dish to Europe when they began colonizing India

A pre-production sketch of Persephone, a human princess that served as a test run for Walt Disney's "Snow White."

Cool Finds

Snow White Wasn’t the First Disney Princess

Dwarfs, meet Persephone

A 1950s Mountain Dew ad as photographed in Jakes Corner, Arizona

Trending Today

Mountain Dew Once Had Ties to Moonshine

The original soda named Mountain Dew was supposed to be a whiskey accompaniment

A trumpet recovered from the USS Houston undergoes treatment at the Naval History and Heritage Command's Underwater Archaeology Branch laboratory on the Washington Navy Yard, Dec. 31, 2013.

Cool Finds

A Trumpet Retrieved From a World War II Shipwreck Could Still Hold Its Owner’s DNA

Conservators are trying to identify the sailor who once played it

Students pledged to speak only Latin, Greek or Hebrew in each other's company in this 1712 note.

Cool Finds

Read About Drama, Politics, Breakfast in These Newly Digitized Colonial Documents

An ambitious Harvard University project brings history to life, archiving nearly half a million documents online

This fresco would have been the height of fashion among residents of Roman London.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Discovered a Roman Fresco Beneath the Streets of London

This ornate, hand-painted wall was once considered to be the height of fashion in Londinium

An archeologist surveys the in-progress excavation of an approximately 4,500-year-old boat.

Trending Today

Archeologists Find a Rare 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Funerary Boat

The watercraft is so well preserved that it still has the pegs, ropes and plant fibers that once held it together

Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, makes his appearance during the Groundhog Day celebration at Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

Trending Today

A Short History of Groundhog Day

Punxsutawney Phil is part of a tradition with roots that extend back thousands of years

A Lady-in-Waiting of France strums her instrument on this card from The Courtly Household Cards (Das Hofämterspiel), created in c. 1450.

Cool Finds

Lavishly Illustrated Medieval Playing Cards Flouted the Church and Law

Secular and religious officials alike frowned on card playing in Europe's Middle Ages

Specialty serveware from the collection of Charles "Chuck" Williams, founder of Williams-Sonoma.

Cool Finds

Williams-Sonoma’s Founder Is Getting His Own Museum

The museum will feature the 4,000-plus pieces of cookware that the kitchenware impresario donated upon his death

Cool Finds

44 Years Ago, Shirley Chisholm Became the First Black Woman to Run For President

Chisholm saw her campaign as a necessary "catalyst for change"

Slogans like the one on this propaganda poster for Mao Zedong, "Urgently Forge Ahead and Bravely Advance with Great Leader Chairman Mao,” take on a new smell now that it’s revealed that Stalin may have studied his poop.

Trending Today

Stalin May Have Studied Mao’s Poop in a Secret Lab

Get a whiff of this stranger-than-fiction story of political paranoia and Soviet science

Cool Finds

The First Person of Native American Descent Was Elected to the U.S. Senate 109 Years Ago Today

Charles Curtis, who would go on to become Herbert Hoover's vice president, left behind a problematic legacy

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