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John Smith Mapped Several Indigenous Villages In Virginia In 1608 — Now Researchers Have Found Them

Over 400 years ago, English explorer John Smith wrote of several Indigenous settlements along a river in modern-day Virginia. Smith’s journals also described an attack on his men by Native Americans from one of these villages. Yet, no evidence of them had ever turned up. Some scholars disputed Smith’s claims outright.

Now, however, archaeologists may have vindicated the explorer’s records.

For months, a team of researchers from St. Mary’s College of Maryland has been surveying the land around...
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55 Photos That Capture The Halcyon Days Of Haight-Ashbury

In the mid-1960s, a neighborhood in San Francisco underwent a historic transformation that placed it at the center of the counterculture movement. Haight-Ashbury, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets, was now the hippie capital of the United States.

Of course, that change didn’t happen overnight. It started as an enclave of bohemians and artists drawn to the neighborhood because of its cheap Victorian housing and close proximity to Golden Gate Park. However, the convergence...
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11 Strange Historical Events, From A War Against Emus To The Time A Pope's Corpse Was Put On Trial

History classes tend to cover the major events from our past: wars, the founding of new nations, the exploration of unknown lands. However, there are countless weird historical events that rarely make it into textbooks.

Some of these incidents include wars fought (and lost) against birds, popes put on trial after they were already dead, and entire neighborhoods nearly drowned in beer. As ridiculous as these events may sound, though, they were not the fever dreams of bored historians — they real...
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A Volcanic Eruption May Have Kickstarted The 'Butterfly Effect' That Led To The Black Death

The Black Death was the most devastating pandemic to ravage Europe, killing up to half of the continent’s population between 1348 and 1349. It is widely accepted that the disease was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, but the circumstances of how it spread so rapidly are less clear. Now, a team of scholars may have found the answer.

New research suggests the devastation may have begun with a volcanic eruption in the year 1345, which then led to a series of events that brought the deadly d...
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The Story Of Leon Trotsky's Assassination And The Soviet Secret Agent Behind It

The death of Leon Trotsky in the summer of 1940 wasn’t necessarily a surprise to the Russian revolutionary. He knew that Joseph Stalin wanted him dead. He just didn’t know who was going to do the killing.

He found out on August 20, 1940. That afternoon, Trotsky was sitting in his study in Coyoacán, a leafy suburb of Mexico City. It was quite a different setting than he was used to.

The man who had once commanded the Red Army, who had stood beside Lenin during the most tumultuous days of the Ru...
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New DNA Study Reveals That Australia Was First Settled 60,000 Years Ago

Nearly 250 years ago, Europeans established their first permanent settlement in Australia and came into contact with the continent’s Aboriginal people. Now, a new study published in Science Advances has determined when these Aboriginal inhabitants arrived in Oceania themselves.

The study involved the analysis of nearly 2,500 genomes from Aboriginal communities across Australia, New Guinea, and other Pacific islands to clarify the timeline of when the first modern humans landed on Sahul, a prehi...
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Who Really Killed Malcolm X? Inside The Lingering Mysteries Surrounding The Black Nationalist's Murder

On Feb. 21, 1965, one of America’s most powerful voices fell silent in a hail of bullets. Malcolm X, the fiery civil rights leader who offered a poignant expression of Black rage and Black pride, was murdered at age 39 while preparing to speak at New York City’s Audubon Ballroom.

Three Nation of Islam members were later convicted of his murder: Thomas Hagan, Muhammad A. Aziz, and Khalil Islam. Hagan admitted to his role in the assassination, but Aziz and Islam always maintained their innocence....
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A 65-Year-Old Woman In Thailand Was Just Found Alive In Her Coffin Right Before Her Cremation

A 65-year-old woman who was believed to be dead stunned workers at a Thai Buddhist temple when, moments before she was meant to be cremated, she began rattling her coffin and knocking on the lid — clear indicators that she was, in fact, alive.

The shocking incident occurred on Sunday, Nov. 23, at Wat Rat Prakongtham, a temple in Nonthaburi on the outskirts of Bangkok that livestreams its cremation ceremonies as a community service. In the video captured of the incident, temple staff are seen lo...
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16 Facts About Rosa Parks That Go Beyond Her Refusal To Give Up Her Bus Seat

On Dec. 1, 1955, a quiet act of defiance on a Montgomery, Alabama public bus ignited one of the most significant social movements in American history. When Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white man, she didn’t just challenge a local law — she challenged a whole system of racial oppression that had defined the American South for generations.

Rosa Parks is often remembered for that single moment of courage, but her story extended well beyond that act of defiance. Parks was a lifelon...
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How Today's Thanksgiving Foods Are Far Different From What The Pilgrims Ate In 1621

Every fourth Thursday in November, millions of Americans gather around tables laden with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. These Thanksgiving foods have become so synonymous with the holiday that it’s hard to imagine the annual feast without them.

Yet the meal we recognize today bears only a passing resemblance to that shared by the Wampanoag people and English colonists in 1621.

Most of the Thanksgiving foods we associate with the holiday didn't debut at that three-day celeb...
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'I Did His Ribs Just Like In A Restaurant': The Chilling Stories Behind 9 Thanksgiving Day Crimes

Thanksgiving is a time for American families to gather together around the table, gorge themselves on turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and celebrate the people and things they are thankful for. However, as the stories of these chilling Thanksgiving crimes show, things sometimes take a darker turn.

Despite the good nature of the holiday, it doesn’t magically make people behave well. For some families, the celebration might be ruined by angry disputes over politics or sports. In other cases...
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Inside The First Thanksgiving, From The Historic Harvest To The Short-Lived Peace Between The Pilgrims And The Wampanoag

For many Americans today, Thanksgiving is a beloved annual holiday centered around family, gratitude, and a delicious feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

But the popular story of its origins — a simple, humble, harmonious meal between Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors — is layered with centuries of myth and a far more complicated history.

The 1621 event, a three-day harvest celebration, was not called “Thanksgiving” at the time that it happened, and i...
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Inside The 'Holy Grail' Of Shipwrecks — Which Sank Carrying A Treasure Worth Up To $20 Billion In Today's Money

Deep beneath the Caribbean waters off the Colombian coast lies the Spanish galleon San José, a once-floating fortress that met its demise after being attacked and sunk by the British in 1708. At the time, the ship was said to be carrying a massive cargo of gold, silver, jewels, and other goods to help the Spanish king pay for his war against the British.

The San José shipwreck and the fortune it was allegedly carrying have been estimated to be worth as much as $20 billion in today’s money. It i...
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Viola Fletcher, The Oldest Survivor Of The Tulsa Race Massacre, Has Died At Age 111

Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, died on Monday, Nov. 24, 2025, surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital. She was 111.

“She had a beautiful smile on her face,” her grandson Ike Howard told CNN. “She loved life, she loved people.”

Fletcher had spent her later years seeking justice for the massacre, a deadly attack by a white mob on the once-thriving Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was seven years old when the assault on her nei...
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'I Have Succumbed To A Curse': 9 People Connected To King Tut's Tomb Who Faced Death Or Misfortune

When Howard Carter peered into the sealed tomb of Tutankhamun on Nov. 26, 1922, and whispered that he saw “wonderful things,” he could not have imagined that his discovery would launch not only the greatest archaeological sensation of the century but also one of history’s most enduring supernatural legends: the tale of King Tut’s curse.

Within months of breaching the pharaoh’s 3,000-year-old resting place, members of the expedition began dying under mysterious circumstances, sparking headlines...
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The Incredible Stories Of 9 Ancient Lost Cities, From Petra And Pompeii To Xanadu And Troy

Cities are large. Even in the ancient world, they served as homes to tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. They are quite unlike a screw or car keys, which are often easy to lose. Yet, the world contains many lost cities — lost to time, lost to history, or simply abandoned and forgotten about, only to be discovered centuries later by explorers or archaeologists who happen across them.

Today, many of these formerly lost cities are invaluable archaeological locations and UNESCO World Heri...
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City Raccoons Are Domesticating Themselves — And Evolving To Be More Like Pets To Get Our Trash

City folks across North America may have noticed that their resident raccoons are looking cuter than usual — and they wouldn’t be wrong.

The same process that saw wolves evolve into domesticated dogs appears to be playing out with America’s favorite “trash pandas,” according to new research from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. One of the most noticeable signs of domestication is a shorter snout, a feature that was widely observed by researchers when they looked at nearly 20,000 image...
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Archaeologists In Spain Unearthed The Remains Of A Celtic Warrior Whose Head Was Cut Off And Put On Display By The Romans

Beneath the rubble of an ancient wall in Spain, archaeologists unearthed the skull of a Celtic warrior who fought against invading Roman forces 2,000 years ago. After he was killed, he was decapitated, and had his head placed upon the fort’s walls as a warning.

The skull dates back to 25 B.C.E., during a series of wars between the Romans and the Cantabri, Celtic warriors who lived in northern Spain. It was found during excavations at La Loma (“The Hill”), where signs of a great battle were also...
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Astonishing Facts About The Trojan War That Reveal The Truth Behind The Mythology

The Trojan War is one of the most famous battles of antiquity, playing a key role in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and appearing in Virgil’s Aeneid.

In Homer’s account, the Trojan War was the result of three goddesses — Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite — meddling in the affairs of mortals after approaching Paris of Troy and asking him to settle a competition between the three of them. After he named Aphrodite the “fairest,” the goddess awarded him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen...
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A New Study Revealed That Dogs Accompanied Early Humans Across Eurasia As Far Back As 10,000 Years Ago

Two new studies published in Science are revealing more information about the history of domestic dogs.

One study analyzed dozens of ancient dog genomes and found that canines were migrating across Eurasia with early humans as far back as 10,000 years ago, showcasing how important the creatures were to our ancestors even during the Stone Age. The second study took a look at hundreds of dog and wolf skulls to determine when exactly the wide range of diversity seen in modern dogs emerged.

This l...
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Lorraine Warren, The Self-Professed Clairvoyant Who Investigated Paranormal Cases Alongside Her Husband

Paranormal investigators rarely become household names. While shows like Ghost Adventures and Paranormal State have had some success on television, it’s still unlikely that the average person on the street would instantly recognize the name Zak Bagans or the name Ryan Buell.

The same can’t be said for the Warrens.

Ed and Lorraine Warren have been immortalized by The Conjuring film franchise, where they are portrayed as heroic demonologists fighting back against the forces of evil. With the War...
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13 Of History's Most Astonishing Vikings, From The Warrior Born 'Without Bones' To The Namesake Of Bluetooth

Vikings were renowned Norse warriors and seafarers, explorers and conquerors who conducted raids, traded goods, and explored Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic between the eighth and 11th centuries.

While they are often portrayed as nothing more than brutal killers, the reality was far more complex. The Vikings were highly skilled craftsmen, sailors, farmers, explorers, and poets with a rich and vibrant culture. And like any culture throughout history, there were some Vikings whose names and...
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An Amateur Fossil Hunter In Australia Has Discovered A Previously Unknown Insect Species

A lifetime of amateur fossil hunting has led to the discovery of a new species of non-biting midge — a small type of fly — that lived roughly 151 million years ago.

Robert Beattie, an 82-year-old retired teacher, has had a fascination with fossils ever since he was a child. Over the years, he’s donated numerous specimens to the Australian Museum, including prehistoric fish and insects found in fossil beds across the country.

But one particular set of fossils from the Talbragar Fish Beds site i...
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How History's Largest Volcanic Eruption Led To The 'Year Without A Summer' In 1816

On April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted in what would become the most powerful volcanic blast in recorded human history. In the immediate aftermath of the eruption, the volcano shot massive amounts of gas, dust, and rock into the atmosphere. All of that debris ultimately led to the globally devastating “Year Without a Summer.”

The particles lingering in the stratosphere blocked solar radiation and absorbed heat, creating extreme weather conditions, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. So,...
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