This baddie not only flourished in 14th and 15th century Eurasia. It also killed millions in the 6th cenuury, and struck again in 19th century China. Scientists are now thinking it might have caused a bottleneck in the population of Europeans in the Neolithic era too!
Creationists frequently bring up the Piltdown Man to support their idea that scientists deliberately lie about human evolution. True, the Piltdown Man was a famous fake (built by *one* “scientist”) – a supposedly missing link between humans and apes. However, it was actually the scientific community that proved the bones to be a forgery.
Charles Darwin’s beard was no accident! He grew it to hide his patchy skin and look more masculine. Source: Follow the story behind his and other Victorian beards in _Victorians Undone_ by Kathryn Hughes.
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The stately Classical background of Paris’ Panthéon has been the perfect location to house the invention of 19th-century physicist Léon Foucault: a massive pendulum made of a 62-lb brass-coated led bob, suspended from the Panthéon’s central dome by a 220-foot wire. Foucault debuted his pendulum in 1851, and although the original was damaged in 1995,
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As indigenous peoples around the world encountered Westerners with increasing frequency in the 19th century, many distinctive aspects of their culture were obliterated by the tugs of globalized culture. The Yaghan peoples (a few shown here in this 1883 photo) of the southernmost part of South America in Tierra del Fuego experienced this, but at
Here’s the world’s smallest primer for a really fascinating topic in anthropology: ritual. We’ll take the “Healy Howl” tradition from Georgetown University as our case study application. Here’s a picture of a cemetery near Healy Hall, where the ritual howl happens every year on Halloween. At Georgetown on October 31, the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,”
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We all know the man on the right — that’s Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century. But to his left is another important scientist, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician so brilliant that Einstein said that he used to come to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton just “to have the privilege
Kurt Godel and Time Travel Read More »
At Shippensburg University, undergraduates have many opportunities to do original historical research projects supervised by faculty who are experts in their fields. Here you can see Jared Diehl and Anna Crawford’s poster presentation for the annual 2023 Academic Day, which commences the semester. Anna and Jared worked this summer to uncover whatever sources they could
The Seneca Rocks formation comes from 425 million years ago, when the Tuscarora sandstone formed so much of the mountainous ridge extending through West Virginia. On September 28, 1965, the Seneca Rocks – Spruce Ridge became the first National Recreation Area in a U.S. National Forest. Some of the trees in this area are 200
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In the fight against the Nazis, the British and their allies faced some of their biggest challenges with German U-boats sinking crucial supply ships in the Atlantic: at one point, 800,000 tons of Allied equipment a month was being lost to the submarines. The Nazis had developed a multi-staged process of code encryption for their
These People Helped Alan Turing Break the Nazi’s Codes Read More »
This is a picture that ought to make us shudder even as we are grateful: it is a Mark39 thermonuclear bomb that came terrifyingly close to detonating on January 24, 1961, when a military aircraft broke up near Goldsboro North Carolina. It was holding a 24-megaton hydrogen bomb, which crashed into a swamp — three
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With the Canadian fires contributing to horrific air pollution in areas as far south as the Carolinas, as well as the recent Trump-dominated US Supreme Court decision that limits the US Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate clean water, the effects of pollution in our lives are of pressing importance. It’s worth remembering an episode
London’s Pea-Souper of 1952 Read More »
This is Doris Fleischman, leaving on a ship for France with her adoring husband in 1925. What made this journey unusual wasn’t the destination — nor was it Fleischman’s business abroad (she was a journalist and interviewed many famous people in her career). Rather, it was that her last name didn’t match her husband’s: Fleischman
Doris Fleischman, the Lucy Stoners, and the Ability to Keep One’s Name Read More »
Step on up here for some old-time British propaganda, put out by the Far Eastern Bureau with the purpose of rallying support for the Allies against the Axis powers during the Second World War. The “strength in unity theme” was a common anthem by the Brits toward their colonial subjects — here, young, straight-backed men
British Propaganda in India during World War II Read More »
Crabtree Falls, located near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, is a place of stunning beauty. I got to visit this 1,200-foot waterfall yesterday after a rainstorm and my pictures do not do it justice. With five major cascades, it is one of the tallest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River, with the longest
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“Those of us who are about to die salute you,” runs the caption on the banner of this macabre illustration. The skeleton in the foreground sits upon a grave, its arm bent with hand upon skull in a pensive gesture. This image was the cover for the Twelfth Annual Report of the Thirteen Club, whise
The Thirteen Club, Fighting Superstition in Turn-of-the-20th-Century U.S. Read More »
Catoctin Mountain Park — situated right next to Cunningham Falls State Park, is in north-central Maryland and is run by the US National Park Service. Its 5,120 acres overlook the Monocacy Valley. Back in 1935, the area was put under the CCC to be fostered as a public recreational area. Cunningham Falls State Park has
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It was ’round about this time of the year — near the Fourth of July — nearly eight decades ago that a rancher from New Mexico called W.W. Brazel brought a bunch of mysterious-looking debris he had found on his property to the local sheriff, who was situated about 80 miles southeast in the small
The Roswell Incident Read More »
Tobyhanna State Park was formed out of state lands that had been on a large artillery range that preceded Tobyhanna Army Depot. It has 5,540 acres of land surrounding Lake Tobyhanna, which is named after an American Indian term meaning “a stream whose banks are fringed with alder.” Today I saw a lot of birch
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The Range Trail is a winding path that traverses across swampy and rocky forest in the Tobyhanna State Park, established in 1949. As you can see from the third slide, the area was used by the U.S. military as a live-artillery training ground during both World Wars. I didn’t see any shell remains on my
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