Hippos didn’t rush out of Central Europe as the ice advanced. New tests on ancient bones reveal these huge semi-aquatic animals still wandered Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley between about 47,000 and 31,000 years ago. Deep into the last ice age. A...
Scientists probing the bones of Napoleon’s fallen troops have uncovered solid evidence of two brutal pathogens that turned the 1812 Russian retreat into a disaster. Researchers at the Institut Pasteur identified paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever in soldiers interred in...
It was February 1945 in the mangrove morasses of Ramree Island along the coast of Burma. It was here where a dark page of World War II was written. When Japanese soldiers withdrew from a losing fight with Allied soldiers, they...
On September 10, 1945 in a dry town in Colorado called Fruita, a farmer by the name of Lloyd Olsen was trying to prepare an evening meal for his family with the help of a chicken. What then followed was no...
Welcome back to our series World Mythology Warnings for Today. In case you missed our previous (and first) episode, be sure you click here to explore what happened in Persia. In today’s second episode, we’ll revisit Ancient Greece as we present...
Frozen for 2,500 years in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, a Pazyryk mummy’s tattoos reveal a world of artistry that would enchant modern tattooists. This mummy belongs to that of a 50-year-old woman whose skin (that was preserved in an icy tomb) bears...
For 4,400 years, a small clay tablet lay hidden inside the ruins of the Ancient Sumerian city of Nippur (in what’s now southern Iraq). This tablet may be miniscule but it reveals a forgotten myth that expands Mespotamian storytelling. Today, this...
In a dusty archive at the University of Zürich, a Swiss teenage victim’s preserved lung dating back to the 1918 Spanish Flu has spilled genetic secrets on one of history’s deadliest diseases. Swiss researchers (spearheaded by paleogeneticist Verena Schünemann at the...
Imagine yourself flipping through a worn and wrinkly 1,000-year-old book, before spotting a scribbled note in the margin about curing a headache with crushed herbs. That’s not the “Dark Ages” of superstition we’ve all heard about. This is a glimpse into...
July 1916 remains an unforgettable moment in maritime history, when the coastline of New Jersey became the site of underwater horror. Over a span of twelve days, a series of shark attacks—two in open ocean waters and three in the brackish...
Imagine yourself stumbling upon a jagged triangular stone glinting in the Mediterranean sun, with its sharp edges hinting at a mysterious past. What you’ve just stumbled upon was once known as glossopetrae or “tongue stones”. For centuries, people across Europe believed...
For as long as humans have ventured into the seas, we’ve shared the waters together with sharks. These remarkable creatures hold the title for the world’s oldest evolutionary history of any living apex predator, with roots stretching back at least 400...
