WEIRD HISTORY
SEM photo of Neanderthal cord from Abri du Maras. M.H. Moncel – By Nell Greenfieldboyce – Tiny bits of twisted plant fibers found on an ancient stone tool suggest that Neanderthals were able to make and use sophisticated cords like string …
By Katie Hunt, CNN 2020 Apr 09 – Paleontologists crossing the Río Yurúa in Amazonian Perú, with the Santa Rosa fossil site in the background. – A crew of now-extinct monkeys made a treacherous transatlantic journey on a natural raft from …
By Genevieve Carlton – Updated 2019 Sep 20 – Though people pretend it’s written in stone, history features tons of famous mysteries – many of which remain unsolved. From the location of Genghis Khan’s tomb to the instructions for making a Byzantine weapon that …
By Stephan Roget 2020 Mar 30 – Amid the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, it shouldn’t come as news to anyone that markets will occasionally run short of something, and not just the staples like food, water, and toilet paper – sometimes it’s …
By Michael Irving – An artist’s rendering of West Antarctica, which would have been a swampy forest around 90 million years ago. Alfred-Wegener-Institut, James McKay/CC-BY 4.0. – It’s hard to imagine Antarctica as anything other than a freezing lifeless landscape, but that wasn’t always …
Crinolines, by design, made physical contact nearly impossible. Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images. – By Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Visiting Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University – As the world grapples with the coronavirus outbreak, “social distancing” has become a buzzword of these strange times. …
By Dave Smith – Updated 2020 Feb 06 – It’s incredible to imagine, but some small countries in all corners of the globe used to be capitals of mighty empires that controlled continents or swaths of land. There are a lot of remnants of …
By Stephan Roget – Updated 2019 Dec 08 – History can change in an instant. A wrong turn, an off-the-cuff statement, or a single shot can forever alter the course of the world and the people in it. Sometimes, history can be …
By Setareh Janda – Updated 2018 Oct 13 – Who was Hedy Lamarr? In the heyday of Old Hollywood, she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. Hedy Lamarr movies were as popular as they were successful. Her breathtaking …
OK is an editorial joke run wild. (Photo: ClassicStock/Corbis) – By Rachel Nuwer – SmithsonianMag.Com – “OK” is one of the most common words in the English language, but linguistically it’s a relative newbie. It’s just 150 years old, and traces its roots …
