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

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.

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.

A law against pretending to be a witch is set to be repealed, but not before two women are charged.

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.

A history of sports fans resorting to performance-enhancing curses, from the Nika riots to the Red Sox.

Bill Gates highlights the work of Mechai Viravaidya who has helped save millions of lives by promoting easier access to contraception.

Food for thought

Compared with the sophisticated technology Russia employed to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, the Soviet propaganda in Brutal Bloc Postcards, published by FUEL Design and Publishing, seems downright quaint. Many of these postcards, published by governments of the U.S.S.R. between the 1960s and 1980s, depict the bland, 1960s five-story concrete-paneled apartments known as “khrushchyovka” as if to say, “Look at the modern wonder of collective worker housing!”

The Spanish flu emerged as the world was recovering from years of global war. It was to have some surprising and far-reaching effects.

These mail-order dwellings democratized homebuying, one kit at a time

The Kodak moment is gone, but today Fujifilm thrives after a massive reorganization. Here is a detailed analysis based on firsthand accounts from top

I was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery.

An international team of researchers, including from the University of Washington, has completed a 3D virtual reconstruction of a Neandertal thorax a model that indicates an upright individual.

For nearly two millennia, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius has served as a stark reminder that nature is capable of some serious violence.

For Ars staffers, IRC led to love, marriage, and trolling.

Stone Mountain has been called “a blight” upon the state of Georgia. But to others it is a key part of Southern heritage.

Junchang Lü was is one of the most important dinosaur researchers of the past half century

Slavery still exists and it happens in plain sight.

Profit-sharing plans for rank-and-file employees are vanishing as corporate America has adopted a “shareholders above all else” approach.

A team of engineers spent years giving new life to old NASA tapes with behind-the-scenes audio from the Apollo era.

Humans did not accelerate the decline of the 'Green Sahara' and may have managed to hold back the onset of the Sahara desert by around 500 years, according to new research led by UCL.

For years, Kathleen McLaughlin smuggled American plasma every time she entered China, home to the world’s largest and deadliest blood debacle. She had no other choice

The experiment of a 'continuous week' was shift work, on a colossal scale. And it failed.

Istanbul’s Haci Bekir sweet shop has been selling Turkish delight for two centuries, largely thanks to the business savvy of generations of women.

When cities lack the paths pedestrians need, people vote with their feet

Newly declassified documents show why the Americans and the Soviets came so close to war in 1973.

An exquisitely preserved skeleton of a woman dubbed the 'Grand Lady' has been discovered in a water-filled coffin in China.

A painstaking investigation of Europe’s cave art has revealed 32 shapes and lines that crop up again and again and could be the world’s oldest code

Civilization is back. But it is no longer the preserve of “Renaissance man” or of “the West,” or even of literate societies. Civilization is a way of talking about human history on the largest scale. From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the latest MoMA exhibition, it binds human history together.

Tilli Tansey navigates the extraordinary story of the life-giving liquid.

A new translation of the tale of magical opulence coincides with fresh evidence that its first teller was a Syrian dazzled by the court of Louis XIV