The Past

The stench of death is actually fairly pleasant.

In an attempt to prove Christianity inferior to communism, a Soviet scientist hoped to play God.

In a world without clocks, people used common activities in place of time units. How long it took you to go to the toilet mattered.

Historians have been able to piece together a clear picture of how the average Roman citizen spent their waking hours.

His crime was so great, he was not only sentenced to death but his name was to be erased from memory.

Because the milk was thin and had an unnatural, bluish tint, vendors stirred in additives such as chalk, flour, eggs, and Plaster-of-Paris.

There are issues with Kinsey's data, but his books revolutionized Americans' thinking about sex and sexuality.

Still, the author's main argument wasn't totally discredited.

It is easy to mock Nobel Laureates who go astray, but eccentricity often accompanies brilliance. We should have some sympathy.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a medieval airship!

Legend holds that newly elected popes in the Middle Ages had to present their genitals for inspection to confirm that they were male.

The design was as intricate as that of modern-day, factory-fabricated denim jeans, and just as durable. The ancients had fashion.

Never mind.

In the 1960s, politicians and bureaucrats were formulating the Central Arizona Project. Citizens fought back.

Sixty years later, will anybody have heard of COVID?

Nero’s reputation as one of the most malevolent emperors in Roman history might be partly slander.

Six hundred years in the history of trousers.

As the Manhattan Project headed for completion, German attempts to build a nuclear weapon had already been dismantled.

Explore how belief shapes destiny, from Oedipus Rex to modern geopolitics.

A 1.5-million-year-old hominin bone shows signs that the victim was eaten by lions — and humans.

The use of the letter x as an unknown is a relatively modern convention.

In many ways, it was worse than Chernobyl.

Today, many Maya sites are polluted with toxic levels of mercury. The contamination likely originated from cinnabar paints and art.

Ice harvesters once made a living from frozen lakes and ponds, but the work was strenuous and dangerous. Then refrigeration changed everything.

The arsons were no accident, archaeological evidence suggests.

The global extent of the Revolutionary War surprises many Americans today — but it was crucial to independence.

Only Caesar lived to tell the tale.

You could send your potential paramour a perfume bottle, a cigar cutter, travel plans — or maybe some cocaine.

Meet the masterful con-men who impressed the great and the good despite the astonishing fiction of their very existence.

Almost all royal lines try to legitimize their rule with legendary origin stories. Here are five of the strangest examples.