Smart News History & Archaeology

Aldrin was became the second human to walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

Cool Finds

Astronauts Fill Out Customs Forms, Too

Read Buzz Aldrin's expense report and customs form from his Apollo 11 mission to the moon

New Research

Teen Schools Professor on "No Irish Need Apply" Signs

Armed with a Google search and a theory, a 14-year-old enters the fray on a longstanding historical debate

Red Rocks Park, Jefferson County, Colorado.

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The Parks Service Just Added Four New National Historic Landmarks

Masonic memorials, bison jumps and parks

A vintage Antonov An-2 in Poland.

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North Korea's Military Still Uses Stealth Planes From the 1940s

The An-2 can hover and fly backwards

Cool Finds

A 13th-Century Sword Is Giving Historians a Headache

The sword's inscription is an 800-year-old mystery

Cool Finds

Scientists Have Been Talking About Greenhouse Gases for 191 Years

The first explorations of the greenhouse effect began in 1824

U.S. Marines search for Haitian rebels in 1919.

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The United States Once Invaded and Occupied Haiti

In 1915, American troops began a 19-year, unofficial occupation of the Caribbean nation

The 7 Line is currently undergoing a system upgrade from one that was installed in the 1930s to one run by computers.

Cool Finds

NYC Subway Technology Goes Way Back...to the 1930s

America's busiest subway system relies on vintage machines

Photo shows a section of the Florida-Caribbean map. In lower left, an insert section shows part of the Caribbean treasure ground. Note heavy concentration of numbers (each location a shipwreck) off the Louisiana coast, and in the Florida Keys.

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Florida Divers Dig Up $1 Million in Sunken Treasure

Treasure hunters find 300-year-old coins from a Spanish fleet off the Florida coast

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70 Years Ago, a B-25 Bomber Crashed Into the Empire State Building

14 people died in the accident

Times Square, New York City

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Times Square’s Iconic Billboards May Be Illegal

Bright lights, big city, breaking the law

Dating human remains (such as this 800-year old skeleton found in Bulgaria) often relies on radiocarbon dating

New Research

Climate Change Might Break Carbon Dating

Fossil fuel emissions mess with the ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere

New Research

Who Were the First People to Eat Chickens?

A find in Israel shows evidence of chicken consumption from as early as 400 B.C.E.

A stone etching on the grave of crewmember Lt. John Irving depicts the dire conditions that the Franklin expedition faced when they reached the Canadian Arctic.

New Research

Franklin’s Doomed Arctic Expedition Ended in Gruesome Cannibalism

New bone analysis suggests crew resorted to eating flesh, then marrow

The fragments comprise two parchment leaves, written in Hijazi script on sheep or goat skin.

New Research

Carbon Dating Reveals One of the Oldest Known Copies of the Quran

Manuscript fragments found in U.K. library were written between 568 and 645

Anthophyllite asbestos from Georgia

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Why Are People Still Using Asbestos?

The story holds parallels with that of the tobacco industry

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The International Olympic Committee Just Rescued Its Priceless Video Archive

Seven years and 100,000 hours of work later, the IOC’s archive has been digitized and preserved

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Central Park Has 22 Statues of Historical Figures. Every Single One is a Man.

Could a crusade to bring historic women into the park change the face of the city?

Cool Finds

In the 1960s, One Man Took Washington D.C.’s Rat Problem Into His Own Hands, Literally

And challenged the city’s race and wealth divide in the process

1924 Doble steam car at the Henry Ford Museum

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Here’s What Steam-Powered Cars Were Like Before the Combustion Engine

The Doble brothers’ built a beautiful steam car in 1924 but mismanagement kept it from being a financial sucess

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