history
A new study suggests that hunting dogs’ barks convey emotional information about the animals they see.
Yukio Mishima treated his life as if it were a story — one with a surprising and deadly final act.
Why should we rely on scientific conclusions even though they cannot be proven? A new essay offers compelling reasons.
Although the statue’s political connotations faded over time, its eyes remain fixed on a key moment in Florentine history.
Air conditioning may keep a room cool, but using it is heating up the planet. It is time for something new — or old.
During World War II, Nazi engineers allegedly tried to create UFO-shaped military aircraft.
Often called modern-day dinosaurs, cassowaries are one of only a few birds known to have killed humans.
In his new book “Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave,” Ryan Holiday explores the virtue of courage and how to overcome fear.
A 5,300-year-old mummy teaches us the global history of tattoos.
Shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly, then the entire city caught fire.
The stone camel sculptures, seven in total and originally uncovered back in 2018, far predate more famous monuments.
As Russia’s youth welcomed a new era of capitalism in the 1990s, their parents and grandparents clung to fleeting memories of Soviet life.
An unexpected finding shows us how little we know about the early human story in our region.
Fossilized footprints found at an excavation site in southwest New Mexico prove humans colonized the continent much earlier than previously thought.
In the perilous mountains of Tibet, archaeologists unearthed ancient hand and footprints that seem to be the creative work of children.
American and French troops turned capturing Hitler’s chalet into a game.
The Russian writer’s scorn went beyond a difference in taste; Leo Tolstoy virulently hated everything Shakespeare had come to stand for.
This is a time for family and friends to gather, watch the full moon and eat mooncakes and other delicacies.
Which philosopher had the strongest arguments? David Hume, who raised some of the best challenges for science, ethics, and religion.
From “shell shock” to “combat fatigue,” the wars of the past century have violently illuminated the power trauma can wield over the mind and body.
How do you recover after an economic apocalypse? It is not what you know, but who you know.
The peasant turned czarist advisor has come to be known and feared as the devil incarnate, but was he really as demonic as we have been led to believe?
The question of anti-Semitism, Nazism, and a particularly nasty sibling haunted Nietzsche’s legacy.
All of these conflicts have a long history. They may also have a long future.
From corrupt czars to bloodthirsty Bolsheviks, Russia has had no shortage of bad leaders. But just how evil were they really?
From the Notre Dame to Buddhist statues, dozens of irreplaceable artifacts are destroyed every year by both man and nature.
Hindsight is 20/20, particularly when you have had 20 years to think about what happened.
Whenever the climate cooled, our hominin ancestors would set up shop in the Arabian Peninsula and vanish again when the planet warmed up.
Once limited in range, mass hysteria can now spread across the globe in an instant.
This short story is a fictional account of two very real people — Anaximander and Anaximenes, two ancient Greeks who tried to make sense of the universe.