Although many in the modern day associate the Soviet Union with Russia, it was one of the world’s largest multi-ethnic states, comprised of 15 republics. The Soviet Union’s first census, conducted in ...

Even as the top hats of the turn of the century became the pageboy caps and the Gatsby tuxedos of the 1920s, J. C. Leyendecker’s suave men sold an American lifestyle of privilege, style, and a sort of ...

Zack Snyder’s 2006 film 300 was a major box office success and a cultural touchstone, largely thanks to the film’s iconic line, “This is Sparta!” While the real King Leonidas never shouted those words ...

By July 1789, the Bastille prison in Paris was a decrepit building that held only seven prisoners. But the royal fortress loomed large in the collective French consciousness, and as rumors of ...

Katarzyna Zowada, a 23-year-old university student based in Kraków, Poland, mysteriously vanished on Nov. 12, 1998. She was supposed to attend an important therapy appointment that day, so her mother ...

To be sure, the clerk turned to the Bertillon system, a method of criminal identification that was widely used at the time. The system used body measurements — such as the width of the skull and the ...

Magna, also known as Carvoran, is a fort located near Hadrian’s Wall, which was constructed by Emperor Hadrian in 122 C.E. to secure the Roman Empire’s northern border. Positioned at the junction of ...

Hürrem Sultan’s legacy is even more impressive in that it began so humbly. She was born in what’s now Ukraine, kidnapped by Crimean Tatars during a slave raid, and forced to be a concubine. From there ...

On August 6, 1890, a crowd gathered at the state prison in Auburn, New York. It was a beautiful, bright summer day, but they had convened for a grisly occasion: to watch William Kemmler, a 30-year-old ...

Archaeologists in Spain recently unearthed a rock that somewhat resembled a human face, especially because of a small red dot where the nose would be. Now, the story behind that dot has left ...

In the ancient world, more than 2,000 statues were built to honor a young man named Antinous. He had been born in a far-flung corner of the Roman Empire, and would have been little remembered if it ...

Some 73 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed across present-day Alaska. But they weren’t alone. A recent study has confirmed that birds lived and nested alongside the dinosaurs, proving that early ...