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Egyptomania: 33 Vintage Photos That Show How The World Has Always Been Obsessed With Ancient Egypt

For more than 2,000 years, people around the world have been fascinated by ancient Egypt. This interest, known as Egyptomania, has peaked several times throughout history, most notably following Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign in the late 18th century and the rediscovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, those who were able to afford it flocked to places like Giza and Luxor to see the past for themselves. Everyone else experienced ancient Egypt t...
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One Of The ‘Most Haunted’ Homes In Massachusetts Is Up For Sale — And Could Be Yours For $1.2 Million

The infamous S.K. Pierce Mansion, dubbed one of the “most haunted” homes in Massachusetts, is currently on the market for $1.2 million for any potential buyers who don’t mind having permanent, undead roommates.

The house, which was built in the Second Empire style in 1875, is located at 4 West Broadway in Gardner, Massachusetts, and features nine bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms. Although the mansion itself is beautiful, its dark history and alleged paranormal happenings are what draw at...
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How Dave Shaw Dove 800 Feet To Recover The Body Of A Fellow Diver — And Lost His Own Life In The Process

On October 28, 2004, Dave Shaw attempted a record-breaking dive in Bushman’s Hole, a formidable underwater cave in South Africa.

Shaw wasn’t the first person to reach the bottom of Bushman’s Hole, also known as Boesmansgat. South African diver Nuno Gomes had set a world record for reaching the bottom back in 1996, but Gomes had simply touched the bottom, turned around, and returned to the surface. Shaw planned to explore the cave’s depths.

But at the bottom of the cave, he found something unex...
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Archaeologists In Peru Uncover The 5,000-Year-Old Grave Of An Elite Woman Buried With A Toucan’s Beak

In the ruins of the ancient town of Áspero in Peru, archaeologists have uncovered the 5,000-year-old grave of a woman from the Caral civilization. Her body was in a state of remarkable preservation, with most of her skin, hair, and nails still intact.

The grave goods buried with the woman are even more extraordinary, however. They include a panel embroidered with macaw feathers, an Amazonian snail shell, and a toucan’s beak inlaid with green and brown beads. Based on the nature of the burial an...
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From Langston Hughes To Billie Holiday, See 33 Stunning Colorized Photos From The Harlem Renaissance

When reflecting on early 20th-century America, some may remember tragic periods like the Great Depression and the rise of organized crime due to Prohibition. But this era was also richly transformative for Black American culture. This was largely thanks to the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that helped redefine Black identity in the United States.

Lasting from about the 1910s to the mid-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance saw the emergence of countless pieces of art, music, and literature that foreve...
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Kim Jong-Nam, The One-Time Heir Apparent Of North Korea Who Was Assassinated In 2017

As the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-nam was widely believed to be his father’s heir to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). However, his path to power was derailed as he got older. And, in February 2017, Kim Jong-nam was brazenly assassinated as he walked through an airport in Malaysia.

Kim Jong-nam’s fall from grace seemingly began in 2001, after a highly publicized debacle in which he was caught attempting to enter Japan with a Dominican Republic passpo...
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A Medieval Expert Believes He Just Found A 'Missing Penis' In The 11th-Century Bayeux Tapestry

Scholars are currently locked in a heated debate over the number of penises depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. In 2018, University of Oxford’s Professor George Garnett counted 93 individual genitalia on the 11th-century embroidery, with 88 belonging to horses and five to human men.

Now, Bayeux Tapestry expert Dr. Christopher Monk claims he’s found a 94th penis. Garrett disagrees with Monk’s assessment, however, and insists that the alleged genitalia is nothing more than the scabbard of a sword or...
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Scientists Just Captured Footage Of A Colossal Squid In Its Natural Habitat For The Very First Time

For the first time since the species was discovered a century ago, a live colossal squid has been caught on video in its natural habitat.

The footage was captured by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dubbed SuBastian near the South Sandwich Islands on March 9, 2025 — and the discovery came as quite a shock to the researchers monitoring the live feed. The ROV was 1,968 feet below the surface of the water when a young squid swam across its path, a sight that researchers called “beautiful and unus...
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Construction Work At A New Golf Course In The Scottish Highlands Just Revealed A Trove Of Ancient Artifacts

A trove of archaeological artifacts was discovered at the site of a new golf course in the Scottish Highlands, including the remains of an Iron Age chariot and a 3,500-year-old Bronze Age cremation urn.

The Old Petty Championship Golf Course is currently under development near Inverness, but archaeologists have now learned that the site is rich with history. In addition to the chariot wheel and urn, they also found flint tools and evidence of at least 25 Neolithic wooden buildings, offering a g...
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Angler In Texas Catches 153-Pound Alligator Gar On A 2-Pound Test Line, Shattering The World Record

Setting world records is nothing new to Art Weston, but his most recent catch — a 153-pound alligator gar — might be one of his most impressive. The seasoned angler holds 80 world records with the International Game Fish Association (IGFA), and that number will soon jump up to 81 once this latest catch is approved.

Weston set out with fishing guide Captain Kirk Kirkland on April 8, 2025, to see if he could reel in an alligator gar weighing more than 110 pounds on a two-pound test line. After a...
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Tent Cities, Abandoned Ships, And Red-Light Districts: 33 Photos Of The Gold Rush In San Francisco

The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 sparked one of the most significant events in United States history and transformed San Francisco from a sleepy port town of approximately 1,000 residents into a booming metropolis within just a few years. The California gold rush forever changed the American West, but San Francisco’s gold rush evolution was perhaps the most drastic.

In 1848, San Francisco was barely a blip on the map. The area that would become the state of California had only jus...
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Archaeologists In France Discover An Iron Age Necropolis Filled With Dozens Of Artifacts, Including Two Intact Swords

In 2022, an archaeological excavation in the small town of Creuzier-le-Neuf, just north of Vichy, France, revealed an ancient Celtic necropolis. After three years of meticulous conservation work, experts have now announced what they found at the site.

The necropolis comprised an area of roughly 7,000 square feet and contained more than 100 graves, though none of the bodies remained due to the acidic soil. The site itself was dated to around 2,300 years ago. Despite the lack of bodies, however,...
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The Disturbing Crimes Of Varg Vikernes, The Black Metal Musician Turned Murderer

“To live like we are supposed to, we need to listen to our blood, so to speak. Our paganism is in our blood, and to be able to create a positive and meaningful civilization in the future, on the ruins of the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ we live in today, we need to live in accordance with our blood.”

Out of context, Varg Vikernes can sound almost philosophical. He would also be the first person to tell you that he’s not a philosopher, which is, ironically, something a philosopher might say. But Vikerne...
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Pneumonia, Dead Livestock, And 'Black Blizzards': The Heartbreak Of The Dust Bowl In 44 Colorized Images

In the 1930s, the area of land known as the Great Plains — a lush flatland spanning parts of 10 states — came to be known by a different name entirely: the “dust bowl.”

One of the most severe environmental catastrophes in American history, the Dust Bowl period saw the Great Plains ravaged by droughts and dust storms that devastated the region and caused significant economic and ecological damage. For nearly a decade, the Great Plains became a virtually uninhabitable wasteland. This disaster was...
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The Harrowing Story Of Harrison Okene, The Man Who Survived 60 Hours Trapped In A Submerged Tugboat

When the Jascon-4 tugboat overturned off the Nigerian coast in May 2013, it made headlines around the world. Most assumed there were no survivors — until three days later, when the ship’s cook Harrison Okene was discovered by divers inside. Incredibly, Okene was alive, clinging to a makeshift raft in a small pocket of air in the overturned vessel.

The 29-year-old had endured what, to many, would be an absolute worst-case scenario. He was trapped almost 100 feet below the water’s surface, with a...
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Doug Hegdahl, The 'Incredibly Stupid' Vietnam War Prisoner Who Saved Lives By Pretending To Be Illiterate

On April 6, 1967, a 20-year-old U.S. Navy sailor named Doug Hegdahl was swept overboard in the Gulf of Tonkin. There, he was picked up by a fishing boat and turned over to North Vietnamese forces, who kept him as a prisoner of war at the infamous Hỏa Lò Prison.

Hegdahl’s captors first tried to use him for propaganda purposes, and in an attempt to buy some time, the young sailor pretended to be illiterate. To his surprise, his ruse worked. The North Vietnamese troops began referring to Hegdahl a...
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How Led Zeppelin Drummer John Bonham Died After Drinking 40 Shots' Worth Of Vodka

When they burst onto the scene in 1968, Led Zeppelin established themselves as a force to be reckoned with by putting out iconic songs like “Whole Lotta Love,” “Immigrant Song,” and “Stairway To Heaven.” Today considered a staple of the rock genre, Led Zeppelin was composed of vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham. But John Bonham’s death in 1980 at the age of just 32 brought the rock group to a screeching halt.

As is the case...
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From The Black Panthers To 9/11, See 33 Powerful Images Captured By Photojournalist Stephen Shames

There’s a common saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Since time immemorial, people have used pictures to tell stories, convey emotions, and record history — and the purpose of a picture has remained largely the same for thousands of years.

Of course, in the past two centuries, rapid technological advancement has changed the way we think about pictures. The development of photography enabled a process that once took hours to instead take mere seconds. Grainy daguerreotypes gave way...
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A New 3D Scan Of The Titanic That's Accurate 'Down To The Rivet' Is Revealing More Details About The Ship's Final Hours

Using the most detailed digital model of the ill-fated Titanic to date, researchers were able to reconstruct the ship’s final hours, confirming eyewitness accounts that engineers worked until the very end to keep the lights on.

Using underwater robots that traveled nearly 13,000 feet down to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, more than 700,000 high-quality images of the wreckage were collected and combined to create a “digital twin” of the lost ship. Through this digital recreation, researchers w...
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This 2,800-Year-Old Dagger Found On A Beach In Poland May Have Been Used For 'Solar Cult' Rituals

Recent storms that tore through the Baltic Sea and surrounding regions also brought a fascinating piece of history to light. Two metal detectorists were searching a beach in northern Poland following heavy rainfall when they came across a small dagger in a piece of clay that had fallen from a nearby cliff.

Jacek Ukowski and Katarzyna Herdzik immediately notified the Museum of the History of Kamień Land about their discovery. Experts there determined that the “richly ornate” dagger was 2,800 yea...
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Inside The Daring Story Of The Wright Brothers And Their 1903 Flight That Changed The World Forever

During the tail end of the 19th century and into the start of the 20th, the world entered what would become known as the “Golden Age of Aviation.” Spurred by scientific curiosity, technological advancements, and a desire to conquer the skies, inventors across the planet began drawing up plans to create the world’s first flying machine, but nobody was successful — until the Wright brothers came along.

Orville and Wilbur Wright had been fascinated with aviation ever since they were young, when th...
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Archaeologists In Guatemala Discovered An Altar Used For Child Sacrifices 1,600 Years Ago

In Guatemala’s Tikal National Park, which was once the center of the Maya civilization, archaeologists discovered a fifth-century C.E. altar from the Teotihuacan culture. The Teotihuacan people lived more than 700 miles north of Tikal, near present-day Mexico City, so the altar’s presence in a former Maya city points to a surprising relationship between the two groups.

Even more surprising, however, is the altar’s history. Archaeologists found the remains of three children under the age of four...
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44 Daguerreotypes From The 1800s That Illustrate History's First Successful Photographic Process

It’s easy to take the conveniences of modern-day photography for granted. Less than 20 years ago, the first iPhone had a single, two-megapixel camera on the back. Now, many of the latest smartphones boast multiple lenses, with the main camera capturing detailed images at a staggering 48 megapixels, or sometimes even higher.

Consumer camera technology has progressed at an increasingly rapid rate — so fast that it’s difficult to remember how cumbersome the photography process used to be. What now...
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Frank Abagnale Jr., The 'World's Greatest Con Man' Who's Been Accused Of Making Up His Own Cons

“I was always aware that I was Frank Abagnale Jr., that I was a check swindler and a faker, and if and when I were caught I wasn’t going to win any Oscars. I was going to jail.”

By his own admission, Frank Abagnale Jr. was a con man. In his memoir Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale describes a life of petty crime at a young age that eventually led to higher-risk cons. His most infamous stunt was impersonating a Pan American World Airways pilot, though he also claimed to have developed innovative met...
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