Enlarge / Two recovered and restored portraits of 19th century Portuguese physician Vicente Urbino de Freitas, suspected of poisoning several of his wife’s family members in the particular “Crime of Flores Street”—Portugal’s first major forensic case. (credit: Ricardo Jorge Dinis-Oliveira, 2019) On January 2, 1890, a Portuguese man named Jose Antonio Sampaio, Jr., died in […]
Enlarge / The Tomb of Caecilia Metella is a mausoleum located just outside Rome at the three mile marker of the Via Appia. (credit: ivioandronico2013/CC BY-SA 4. 0 ) Among the many popular tourist sites in Rome is an impressive 2000-year-old mausoleum along the Via Appia known as the Tomb of Caecilia Metella , a […]
Enlarge / Portrait of Catherine the Great. Her 1787 letter to Count Piotr Aleksandrovich Rumiantsev—now up for auction—called for a national vaccination campaign against smallpox. (credit: Public domain ) During her long reign, Catherine the Great ‘s leadership transformed Russia into a powerhouse of Europe. She was also a leader in public health policy, championing […]
Enlarge / Four vector drawings show the five-slit spiral lock mechanism used by Mary, Queen of Scots; the front and back of a locked letter packet using this method; and an unfolded lock. Sections are numbered 1-20 to show the different areas created by folding. (credit: Unlocking History Research Group) On the eve of her […]
Enlarge / The mushroom cloud from the Soviet detonation of “Tsar Bomba” on October 30, 1961, was so large that the photographers had a hard time capturing its full dimensions. (credit: New York Times) The detonation of the first nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is seared into our collective memory, and […]
Enlarge / The partially mutilated remains of a Vesuvius victim, found at the site of what would have been the beach of Herculaneum. (credit: Domenico Camardo/Herculaneum Project) Archaeologists have announced the “sensational” discovery of the partially mutilated skeletal remains of a middle-aged man who perished on the beach at Herculaneum during the eruption of Mount […]
Enlarge / Nuclear physicists used micro-XRF scanning to produce elemental maps for Roman denarii coins and their color overlays. (credit: K.V. Manukyan et al., 2019) Most people associate nuclear physics with the atomic bomb or nuclear power plants, and those associations are often negative. Michael Wiescher, a nuclear physicist at the University of Notre Dame, […]
Enlarge / Effigy of Edward of Woodstock, aka the Black Prince, in Canterbury Cathedral. (credit: Josep Renalias/CC BY-SA 2.5) Visitors to Canterbury Cathedral can view the effigy of a 14th-century knight in full armor laid out on top of a marble tomb. It’s the tomb of Edward of Woodstock, colloquially known as the Black Prince, […]
Enlarge / The hull of Henry VIII’s favorite warship, the Mary Rose , and many thousands of recovered artifacts are housed in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England. (credit: Johnny Black) Henry VIII’s favorite warship, the Mary Rose , sank in battle in 1545. The shipwreck was successfully raised in 1982, along with thousands […]
Enlarge / Hair from Lakota Sioux leader Sitting Bull’s scalp lock, from which DNA was extracted for analysis. (credit: Eske Willerslev) An international team of scientists has confirmed the lineage of a living descendent of the famous Lakota Chief Sitting Bull via a new method of DNA analysis designed to track familial lineage using ancient […]