Stories

In 1996, two college students stumbled upon bones on the banks of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington. Radiocarbon dating revealed the skeleton was about 9,000 years old—one of the oldest and most complete found in North America.

Once quiet allies in a turbulent region, Iran and Israel maintained close, albeit discreet, ties until 1979.

At the heart of Kielce, Poland, stands a bus station like no other—a circular dome set in the middle of a roundabout, instantly recognizable for its spaceship-like shape.

Tom Brown didn’t expect retirement to lead to a new mission. But in 1999, just months after stepping away from his career as a chemical engineer, he stopped at a farmers market in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. There, a display of heirloom apples caught his attention.

Before burgers, cronuts, and energy drinks, American plates were filled with dishes few today would recognize—let alone crave. Eel pie, roast beaver tail, and pear cider were once familiar staples, not oddities.

Jerusalem’s earliest settlement dates to around 3000 BCE near the Gihon Spring. Known as “Rusalimum” in Egyptian texts around 2000 BCE, it began as a fortified Canaanite city by the 17th century BCE.

Chindōgu (珍道具), meaning “unusual tool,” was coined by Kenji Kawakami, a Japanese inventor and former editor of the home-shopping magazine Mail Order Life.

High above the frozen expanse of Antarctica, a balloon-borne experiment was supposed to observe cosmic rays falling from space.

But what it found instead stunned physicists: signals rising from beneath the ice, seemingly originating from deep within the Earth.

In November 1942, amid the massive shipbuilding effort of World War II, the United States set a ship construction record that stunned even seasoned engineers.

On June 15, 1215, King John of England met a group of rebel barons in a meadow called Runnymede, on the banks of the River Thames. Surrounded by tents, guards, and the weight of near civil war, John affixed his seal to a document that would be known as Magna Carta.