The Past

On the morning of April 20, 1961, all conditions were "go" for an attempt at free flight. A man was on standby with a fire extinguisher. Just in case.

Plagues, war, and genocide were literally frozen in time.

During the industrial era the cost of artificial light fell off a cliff — and the road to illumination was paved with ingenuity and slaughter.

“Chicago May” was a classic swindler who conned her way around the world in the early twentieth century. She was also a sign of hard times.

A rift in thinking about who should control powerful new technologies sent the brothers on diverging paths. For one, the story ended with a mission to bring science to the public.

The truth may be out there — but it’s not in these close encounters of the third kind.

CRISPR study helps answer a question that has long puzzled scientists.

New radiocarbon dating reveals astonishing insights.

These scrolls are the only remaining intact library of ancient Rome — and they will crumble at a touch.

The National Defense Education Act of 1958 meshed with white anxiety about the desegregation of schools.

Big Think spoke with historian Marc-William Palen about the egalitarian aims of the free-trade movement in past centuries.

In 1924, sociologist and social reformer Caroline Bartlett Crane designed an award-winning tiny home in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Archaeologists have identified what may be Europe’s oldest human-made megastructure.

The Uros of Lake Titicaca live on floating islands made from reeds. How did they get there?

The study suggests that human ancestors expanded across Europe faster than previously thought.

"She understood me and I understood her. I loved that pigeon.”

New DNA analyses raise questions over the theory that Christopher Columbus and his men brought syphilis to Europe.

Skilled hunters adapted to the changing landscape and left tantalizing clues to who they were.

Archaeologist Bernard Frischer spent decades uploading the ruins of the Eternal City to the cloud. Here’s what it looks like.

They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains.

Teller and Sagan debated fiercely over nuclear proliferation. But was the conflict as personal as it was intellectual for Teller?

When battles raged in ancient cities, their rocks blazed so brightly that they could be reoriented according to Earth's magnetic field.

Along with obsidian that dazzled scientists in Canada.

Meet the people paid to rouse the workers of industrial Britain.

A sober look at a wild conspiracy theory that argues the Middle Ages never happened.

The Parthenon embodies the ideals of perfection Classical Greeks sought from architecture. The neighboring Erechtheion offers something else.

From Æthelred the Unready to Halfdan the Bad Entertainer, these strange epithets colored the legacy of four rather unlucky historical figures.

Today, the F-word is enjoying a renaissance the likes of which it hasn’t seen since, well, the Renaissance.

The volcano’s historic eruption preserved an ancient library, but rendered its content illegible. A public competition aims to change that.

Perhaps it’s not just an oddly shaped hill, after all.