Ho Chi Bear and the Ravens

Dubbed the Ravens, misfit American pilots in Vietnam learned they could fly, fight, and drink as they pleased in a CIA-sponsored secret war. Just one catch: They answered to General Vang Pao.

The Most Honored Photograph | PetaPixel

Doesn’t look like much, does it? But, depending upon your definition, this photograph, a team effort by 9 men, is the most honored picture in U. S.

‘I’d Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This’

The plan to kill Osama bin Laden—from the spycraft to the assault to its bizarre political backdrop—as told by the people in the room.

The girl in the Kent State photo and the lifelong burden of being a national symbol

In 1970, an image of a dead protester at Kent State became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?

The Real Book - 99% Invisible

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It’s delightfully homemade-looking—like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the…

Did the Black Death Rampage Across the World a Century Earlier Than Previously Thought?

Scholar Monica Green combined the science of genetics with the study of old texts to reach a new hypothesis about the plague

Meeting the Darkhad, the soul guards of Genghis Khan - SupChina

The 25 Greatest Art Heists of All Time

What are the greatest art heists of all time? See a list of the 25 most memorable thefts from museums.

The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody: The Woman Who Helped Avert a Nuclear War

America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told

Letter from Chihuahua - Cliff Dwellers of the Sierra Madre - Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2021

A recurring design motif found in northern Mexico’s ancient mountain villages reflects complex cultural ties between distant peoples

The Original Karen

After Kenya declared independence from British rule in 1963, there came a flood of renamings. Schools, suburbs, and roads were rechristened in ways that spoke to a new idea of what it meant to be…

A Massacre in a Forest Becomes a Test of Poland’s Pushback on Wartime Blame

Two researchers are on trial for writing that a Polish mayor was complicit in a massacre. Critics say the government is trying to emphasize Polish suffering in World War II and downplay complicity in Nazi crimes.

The 432-year-old manual on social distancing

In this spookily prescient booklet, people are advised to keep six feet apart, avoid shaking hands and only send one person per household out to do the shopping.

Raiders of the lost steel

The skills behind the legendary sharpness of wootz steel were once forgotten, but Andy Extance talks to the researchers unsheathing its secrets

'I'm a song catcher': 60 years of Arhoolie Records, the label for a lost America

Now 89, one-time refugee Chris Strachwitz presides over one of the greatest US labels, having removed the stigma from working-class music like blues and zydeco to give a voice to the ignored

Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World · Collaborati

An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where…

Wind Power: How the 19th-Century’s Greatest Shipbuilder Opened the Pacific

[caption id="attachment_80535" align="aligncenter" width="576"] The Tahiti, seen here sailing on San Francisco Bay, was a 124-foot brigantine built by Tur...

The Silk Road: the route for technological exchange that shaped the modern

The latest banks and financial services company and industry news with expert analysis from the BBVA, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.

The Death of Alexander the Great: One of History’s Great Unsolved Mysteries

Alexander the Great’s death is an unsolved mystery. Was he a victim of natural causes, felled by some kind of fever, or did his marshals assas­sinate him, angered by his tyrannical ways? An autopsy…

The British Once Built a 1,100-Mile Hedge Through the Middle of India

This quixotic colonial barrier was meant to enforce taxes.

Finding Amelia Earhart’s Plane Seemed Impossible. Then Came a Startling Clu

Robert Ballard has found the Titanic and other famous shipwrecks. This month his crew started trying to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries.

The secret seat of the Knights Templar

Under the cobblestoned streets of Paris’s chicest district lie the remnants of the mysterious Knights Templar’s mightiest stronghold.

On Hitler’s Last Desperate Plan to Destroy Paris

On August 23rd, the day after Dietrich von Choltitz dispatched Rolf Nordling to contact the Allies, Hitler sent a message to Field Marshal Walther Model and von Choltitz demanding that Paris be hel…

Wolves of Karelia

A short story by Arna Bontemps Hemenway

Where the Bodies Are Buried

In 1910, East Texas saw one of America’s deadliest post-Reconstruction racial purges. One survivor’s descendants have waged an uphill battle for generations to unearth that violent past.

https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-06-07/somerton-man?fbclid=IwAR3mTzc-JjmM1vHSTPKCWAsQ_yTrc8Dlt6dLohbcCJ65DvIU8tDyqFUVzDc

During the Cold War, the CIA Secretly Plucked a Soviet Submarine From the Ocean Floor Using a Giant Claw

The International Spy Museum details the audacious plan that involved a reclusive billionaire, a 618-foot-long ship, and a great deal of stealth

How Turkish coffee destroyed an empire

Kahve was a favourite drink of the Ottoman Empire’s ruling class. Little did they know it would one day hasten the empire’s demise

The Nazi Interrogator Who Revealed the Value of Kindness

Thanks in part to the work of Hanns Scharff and a slew of studies on interrogation techniques, we know it's best to be genuinely friendly no matter who you're trying to get information out of.

The Plot to Kill George Washington

In The First Conspiracy, thriller writer Brad Meltzer uncovers a real-life story too good to turn into fiction

Was History Fair to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Owners? | At the Smiths

Charged with manslaughter, the owners were acquitted in December 1911. A Smithsonian curator reexamines the labor and business practices of the era

Tarrare: The Medical Marvel Who Could Eat Anything — And Did

"The dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect, as if they had anticipated the kind of fate he was preparing for them."

Ansel Adams’ pictures of Los Angeles recall an era of war factories and 10-cent hot dogs

We’ve all seen Ansel Adams’ luscious black-and-white images of Yosemite. Lesser known are his pictures of life in World War II-era Los…

The Lethal Lunch That Shook Scotland

From cold cuts to cold case.

Crossing the Sahara in the Fourteenth Century | François-Xavier Fauvelle

How to make the trip from Sijilmasa to Oualata, circa 1352.

The Lessons Of Dien Bien Phu | Hoover Institution

The most consequential military engagement in Southeast Asia in the 20th century is the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It was fought ostensibly between the French and the communist-led Vietmin at Dien Bien Phu, an obscure valley bordering China, in the remote northwestern part of…

Why big companies squander brilliant ideas

J F C Fuller did not invent the tank. That distinction should probably fall to E L de Mole, an Australian who approached the British war office in 1912 with a

The Man Who Walked Backward

When the Great Depression put Plennie Wingo’s bustling Abilene cafe out of business, he tried to find fame, fortune, and a sense of meaning the only way he knew how: by embarking on an audacious trip around the world on foot. In reverse.

When Local Roller Rinks Had Their Own Collectible Stickers

Distinctive designs from the "Golden Age" of roller-skating.

Into the Cave of Chile’s Witches

Did members of a powerful society of warlocks actually murder their enemies and kidnap children?

Inside the 20-year decline of Toys R Us

Cost cuts, stressed employees, intercompany rivalries, dirty floors, dusty rafters, glitchy IT, fudged metrics: The people who ran the failed toy retailer's stores know what went wrong.

The Counterfeit Queen of Soul | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian

A strange and bittersweet ballad of kidnapping, stolen identity and unlikely stardom

Optical Scanning Technology Lets Researchers Recover Lost Indigenous Languages from Old Wax Cylinder Recordings

He did not, visionary though he was, conceive of one extraordinary use to which wax cylinders might be put—the recovery or reconstruction of extinct and endangered indigenous languages and cultures in California.

A Brief History of America's Appetite for Macaroni and Cheese

Popularized by Thomas Jefferson, this versatile dish fulfills our nation's quest for the 'cheapest protein possible'

The Two-Napkin Protocol

In 1989, Kirk Lougheed of Cisco and Yakov Rekhter of IBM were having lunch in a meeting hall cafeteria at an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) conference. They wrote a new routing protocol that became RFC (Request for Comment) 1105, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), known…

A lost vision of West Virginia – Explore Parts Unknown

Famous photos of Appalachia in the Depression tell only part of the story.

A Digital Archive of Heavy Metal, the Influential “Adult Fantasy Magazine”

In making a time capsule of the late 20th century, one would be remiss if they did not include at least an issue or two of Heavy Metal magazine. Yes, it specialized in unapologetically turning women in metal bras into sex objects.

The Conqueror Who Longed for Melons - Gastro Obscura

Many Indian dishes can be traced back, indirectly, to a 16th-century, food-obsessed ruler named Babur.

Gavin Francis · The Untreatable: The Spanish Flu

The pandemic had some influence on the lives of everyone alive today. Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich died from...

Baseball, BBQ, and Dead Ponies—A History of Fat Men’s Clubs in Texas

A peek inside the revelry and rivalry of Texas's fat men's clubs.