London’s River Became So Smelly In 1858 That It Forced The City To Rebuild Its Sewers
In the summer of 1858, London had a problem that was impossible to ignore. The River Thames, already carrying enormous quantities of human waste and industrial pollution,…
Why Did The Dutch Let England Keep Manhattan? The Answer Was A Tiny Island Full Of Nutmeg
Today, Manhattan is one of the most valuable and recognizable pieces of land in the world. But in 1667, its future was tied to a tiny Indonesian…
In 536, The Sun Seemed To Lose Its Light. Then The World Turned Cold
In the year 536, people across parts of Europe and Asia looked toward the Sun and noticed something was wrong. Contemporary writers described a strange, persistent haze…
A Ship Was Found In The Atlantic With Food, Cargo And No Crew
On December 4, 1872, sailors aboard the brigantine Dei Gratia spotted another ship drifting across the Atlantic, about 400 miles east of the Azores. It was the…
A WWII Fighter Plane Was Buried Under 268 Feet Of Ice For 50 Years. Then It Flew Again
In 1942, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning was forced to land on the Greenland ice cap after bad weather disrupted a World War II ferry mission. The pilots…
Japan Built A 72,000-Ton Aircraft Carrier In Secret. An American Submarine Sank It On Its First Voyage
In the final months of World War II, Japan secretly built one of the largest warships ever constructed. Originally designed as a super battleship, the vessel was…
America Had Just Lost Pearl Harbor. Then 524 Men Beat Back A Japanese Invasion
Four days after Pearl Harbor, when almost every piece of news reaching America seemed to be getting worse, newspapers suddenly had something different to print. On a…
Alexander The Great Died At 32. For 2,000 Years, Historians Have Asked One Question: Who Killed Him?
In 323 BC, Alexander the Great was still only 32 years old and had already conquered an empire stretching from Greece and Egypt to Persia and parts…
A Man Shot A Pig In 1859. Then America And Britain Nearly Went To War
On June 15, 1859, an American settler on San Juan Island picked up his gun and shot a pig. The animal had repeatedly wandered into his garden…
For 400 Years, We Called Them The Lost Colony. What If They Were Never Lost?
In 1590, John White returned to Roanoke Island expecting to find more than 100 English settlers he had left behind three years earlier. Instead, the settlement was…