Cave of Swimmers in the Valley of Pictures
There is a rock shelter wall in one of the driest deserts on Earth on which human figures are depicted with limbs bent as though they are swimming through water...
Category: History
James Madison and the Bill of Rights
James Madison stood about five feet four and weighed scarcely a hundred pounds. He was pale, frail, and a hypochondriac, though his ailments were quite real, an...
The Day the Mona Lisa Disappeared
A painter named Louis Béroud walked into the Salon Carré of the Louvre to sketch the Mona Lisa on Tuesday morning, August 22, 1911. Instead, he found four iron ...
The Statue of Liberty Comes to America
The statue that would become one of the most famous in the world arrived in New York Harbor on the morning of June 17, 1885. The ship that carried her, the Fren...
The $66.84 That Built the Public Library
On April 9, 1833, the citizens of Peterborough, New Hampshire, gathered for a town meeting and voted to spend $66.84, about $2,600 today, on books. The funds wo...
The First Transcontinental Telephone Call
Two and a half years had passed since the earthquake and fires that devastated San Francisco on April 18, 1906. And despite an astonishingly fast rebuilding eff...
The Munich Agreement
The question was how to keep the peace. And British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain wanted peace. He had seen what war does. Had lost family to it. He knew t...
The First Official Postcard
The postcard is just a slight paper rectangle that travels naked in the world — no envelope, no seal, nothing to hide the writing from all the eyes along its jo...
The Sun Sparks the Wires in 1859
It was a clear and sunny morning on September 1, 1859, as Richard Carrington sat down at the telescope in his private observatory just outside of London — perfe...
The Great Molasses Flood of 1919
The molasses tank had become a fixture and familiar presence above Commercial Street in Boston’s North End, the city’s oldest and, at this point, largely ...