“[A] river that carried all kinds of people and pulled them together in going the same direction. And it did it quickly, it did it efficiently, it did it without as much argument or friction.” — Jimmy Collier. By Will Bostwick. (Sept. 4, 2018)

I would like to pay tribute to both of my Grandpa's who have now passed on from this earth. I pray that all families, veterans, and families of veterans have a Happy Veterans Day 2018.

In 1978, I went to Guyana on a fact-finding mission. By the time I returned, more than 900 people died. I was almost one of them. By Jackie Speier.

Trove of DNA from prehistoric inhabitants reveals that the continents’ early settlers moved far and fast.

Lest we forget what? What exactly? And who is this “we?” By George Theodoridis.

A military exercise staged 35 years ago this week almost triggered World War Three. Previously secret documents now reveal what happened. By Richard Hollingham.

Egyptologists stumble across ramp that helps explain how huge blocks of stones were hauled into place.

On the ineffable magic of four little manuscripts of Old English poetry

The earliest known painting of an animal has been identified in a cave on the island of Borneo.

On 11th November 1918, Poland regained its independence after 123 years of partitioning by Russia, Prussia and Austria. But what actually happened that historic day? Culture.pl chronicles the events of what is now commemorated as Independence Day, explaining why they occurred peacefully despite the obvious tension, and how these events brought back Poland’s freedom.

For some students, A People’s History will be the only history book they read. What does it teach them? By Sam Wineburg.

In 1978, I went to Guyana on a fact-finding mission. By the time I returned, more than 900 people died. I was almost one of them.

He was a legendary tank commander in WWII who returned to the scene of a battle 68 years later to meet a former enemy and answer one question about a woman he encountered in a battle: Did she live?

They are the truly forgotten dead. Sixteen million animals “served” in the first world war – and the RSPCA estimates that 484,143 horses, mules, camels and bullocks were killed in British service between 1914 and 1918. Some died before they reached the western front: of 94,000 horses sent from North America in 1917, 2,700 drowned when their vessels were sunk by submarines. Trench dogs hunted for rats in the trenches. Others carried messages. The German army alone employed 30,000 dogs.

Hidden for 70 years, a new invaluable contribution to Holocaust literature—the diary of Renia Spiegel—was rediscovered inside a desk in New York

On Aug. 4, 1972, the crew of a U.S. Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off Hon La observed 20 to 25 explosions over about 30 seconds. They also witnessed an additional 25 to 30 mud spots in the waters nearby. Destructor sea mines had been deployed here during Operation Pocket Money, a mining campaign launched in 1972 against principal North Vietnamese ports.

Reality may get in the way of ambitions.

The brutal unsolved murder of Pamela Werner, a young British woman in Beijing (then known as Beiping 北平) in the winter of 1937, is the subject of Graeme Sheppard's new book, "A Death in Peking." Drawing on years of police experience, Sheppard reveals the facts behind the 1937 crime, while also illustrating the extraordinary lives of the people involved, both foreigner and Chinese.

Told here in full for the first time, this is the horrifying story of the first murder on the Appalachian Trail, the kidnapping that followed, and how one woman learned to survive.

Pure joy!

On the new triangle trade, and the surprising connection between modern slavery and ecological disaster.

The 1918 Spanish flu outbreak killed more people than both world wars. Don’t imagine such a thing could never happen again, says the Guardian columnist Martin Kettle

Elephant birds, the largest known birds, were not daytime foragers as thought; rather, they were highly adapted for the night life.

How strange rocks—and an obscure language—are changing a decades-old academic consensus.

In 1958 KLM began flying the transpolar route between Europe and Tokyo. Because of the dangerous route the flights took each plane carried an Arctic survival kit. This included: sleeping bags, tents, a raft, a shovel, snow shoes, a camp stove, cold weather clothing, a hatchet and a 7.62x51mm chambered ArmaLite AR-10.

Men using the public toilets in Antiochia ad Cragum would have gotten the dirty jokes in the floor mosaics.

Pencils weren’t always yellow. We have the marketing genius of a 19th-century Czech manufacturer to thank for their now-ubiquitous hue.

How folk tales and traditional life snuck into avant-garde kids' books in the 1930s.

Researchers in Egypt have discovered a 4,500-year-old ramp system used to haul alabaster stones out of a quarry

A law against pretending to be a witch is set to be repealed, but not before two women are charged.

As Halloween revelers prepare to feast on chocolate, a new study from an international team of researchers, including the University of British Columbia, is pushing back the origins of the delicious sweet treat. The study, published online today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that cacao—the plant from which chocolate is made—was domesticated, or grown by people for food, around 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. In addition, the researchers found cacao was originally domesticated in South America, rather than in Central America.

Aged 1,693 years, its contents are probably still safe to drink.

Long before veggie burgers and soy lattes were fashionable, Kin was sent on a mission by the United States government to uncover the benefits of the soybean for Americans. In 1917 Yamei Kin, a Chinese-born doctor then living in New York, visited her homeland to study a crop that was virtually unknown to Americans: the soybean.