Smart News History & Archaeology

Starting New York Giants catcher John Tortes "Chief" Meyers in an unspecified game against the female team in 1913.

Cool Finds

Amateur Women's Baseball Teams Existed as Early as 1866

They typically challenged local a men’s teams to play

An African American soldier is shown cooking at the camp kitchen of 2nd New York Regiment during the Civil War

Cool Finds

The Civil War’s Division of North and South is Reflected in Cookbooks

Naval blockades kept the South starving for salt and other foods, a fact reflected in the recipes of the time

Cool Finds

In 1938, the NY Times Wrote About a Weird New Food: The Cheeseburger

Apparently, cheese on meat needed some explanation

Secret Service agents grab Gerald Ford seconds after Sara Jane Moore attempts to shoot him in September 1975.

Cool Finds

These Two Female Assassins Independently Tried to Kill Gerald Ford

The only two women to attempt to kill a president did so within 17 days of one another

People look at ancient Assyrian human-headed winged bull statues at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad March 8, 2015.

Trending Today

Museums Issue Most-Threatened List of Iraqi Treasures

Seven types of cultural objects are under threat from the Islamic State and instability in Iraq

Snail shells found in Lebanon indicate humans were using modern tools before they reached Europe

New Research

Tools Weren’t Invented in Europe, They Were Carried There 50,000 Years Ago

Analysis of shells and human bones from a site in Lebanon suggests modern tools were in use

A prototype of the Predictor pregnancy test (left) and the test as it went to market in the late 1970s (right).

Cool Finds

This is What the First Home Pregnancy Test Looked Like

"Predictor" gave results in just two hours

Jeanne Villepreux-Power described how the Paper Nautilus grew its own shell

Cool Finds

A 19th Century Shipwreck Might Be Why This Famous Female Naturalist Faded to Obscurity

Jeanne Villepreux-Power invented the aquarium and studied cephalopods, but today few recognize her name

In 16th-century England, death by plague, depicted in the wood carving above, might have been an easy way to go compared to the accidents that could befall a person in everyday life.

Cool Finds

Here Are Some of the Weird Ways You Could Die in Tudor England

Pole vaulting and bacon are among the odd causes of death discovered by historians

Cool Finds

Archivists Uncover an Unfinished Memoir By Orson Welles

Fragments of “Confessions of a One-Man Band” discovered in a newly-acquired trove of documents

New Research

Scientists Just Mummified a Human Leg to Test Ancient Egyptian Techniques

It took 208 days for Swiss scientists to mummify a fresh leg using natron

The Egtved girl was a high-born female from the Bronze Age. In her grave in Denmark, she wears a wool dress. Wool textiles and a bronze belt plate that resembles the sun surround her remains.

Cool Finds

What Was Life Like for a Girl in the Bronze Age?

Analysis of a 3,400-year-old burial traces the life story of a Bronze Age female

Cool Finds

Take a Drone Tour of Ancient History

Drones offer a soaring perspective of ancient sites

The original Pac-Man was kind of a feminist.

Pac-Man Turns 35 This Month

The now-iconic game was originally released by Namco in 1980

A glacier in Svaldbard

Cool Finds

As Glaciers Retreat, They Give up the Bodies and Artifacts They Swallowed

Around the world global warming is exposing bodies lost in glaciers

Unearthed at the Cova Negra site in Spain, skull fragments from a Neanderthal child have telltale punctures in the right parietal region.

New Research

Ancient Carnivores Had a Taste for Neanderthal Meat

Researchers link bite marks on a Neanderthal skull to the fangs of an ancient big cat

A guard patrolling the ruins of Nimrud in 1995

Trending Today

Cyber-archeology May be the Way to Remember Artifacts Destroyed by Militants

Digitally saving 3D models is the only way to offset some lost cultural artifacts

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pictured here in 1923, enjoyed using the methods of Sherlock Holmes on real cases.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Once Helped Clear an Innocent Man of Murder

On his birthday, revist the mystery author's most famous case

A jawbone from an ancient Taimyr wolf that lived about 35,000 years ago

New Research

Humans May Have Domesticated Dogs Tens of Thousands of Years Earlier Than Thought

Genetic analysis from an ancient wolf show just how complicated dog evolution was

Evidence from reindeer combs, like the one above, hints that the Vikings may have traded with Denmark before they started raiding England.

Vikings Didn't Just Raid, They Traded Too

Reindeer artifacts found at Medieval market sites suggest the famed raiders tried the merchant thing first

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