Three hundred years ago it was a three-month cold snap rather than disease that blighted the country

The U.S. Constitution owes a huge debt to ancient Rome. The Founding Fathers were well-versed in Greek and Roman History. Leaders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison read the historian Polybius, who laid out one of the clearest descriptions of the Roman Republic’s constitution, where representatives of various factions and social classes checked the power of the elites and the power of the mob. It’s not surprising that in the United States’ nascent years, comparisons to ancient Rome were common.

The Bard, like us, lived through a period of trauma. One expert now believes it coloured his later plays

Sotheby’s, which sold the 297 letters, says they reveal ‘a complex and ambiguous relationship where unrequited passion and mistrust mingle’

A spectacular Anglo-Saxon silver cross has emerged from beneath 1,000 years of encrusted dirt following painstaking conservation. Such is its quality that whoever commissioned this treasure may have been a high-standing cleric or even a king. It was a sorry-looking object when first unearthed in 2014 from a ploughed field in western Scotland as part of the Galloway Hoard, the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, acquired by the National Museums Scotland (NMS) in 2017.

A team of archaeologists is working to uncover whether ancient objects in South Africa were once used as sound tools to make noise or music.

The public website draws connections between existing datasets to piece together fragmentary narratives

The trustees of the house where Austen wrote her celebrated novels are finding ways to keep visitors happy—even amid a pandemic

Visiting comets can serve as markers in historical timelines. A team of Japanese researchers used one to confirm the death of an Empress.

Archaeologists discovered a collection of 12,000-year-old rock paintings in the Amazon that depict people living amongst mastodons and other giant animals.

The decoded text from the Zodiac Killer reads: “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. ... I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice (sic) all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me.”

A re-analysis of the skeleton of a 2-year-old Neanderthal is providing some of the strongest evidence yet that Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead.

It’s one of the hardest jobs to get in the world. And even if you’re selected to become an astronaut, you’re still not guaranteed a flight to space.

The decade-long hunt captured the world's attention, but when it finally ended in June, everyone still wanted to know: Who had solved the mystery? This week, as legal proceedings threaten his anonymity, a 32-year-old medical student is ready to go on the record.

Forty years ago The Beatles star was assassinated – and has since held a god-like status around the world. David Barnett looks at the many manifestations of him in popular culture.

In the early 1800s, a Swiss explorer tricked his way into Petra, the ancient oasis whose location had been a closely guarded secret for centuries.

Of the many mysteries that surround the Golden State Killer, one of the most consequential is exactly how authorities caught Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. four decades after his murders began.

A fast-moving equine flu cratered the US economy in the fall of 1872, showing all too clearly that horses were essential and deserved better treatment.

Jørgen Brønlund was the last to die during the ill-fated mission in Greenland.

In 1964 Australian athlete Reg Spiers sent himself from London to Australia in a wooden box - he was transported as freight in the cargo hold of a plane.