Peter the Great cutting a Boyar's beard

Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

Why did the Russian tsar seek to ban beards?
Maurice Papon, 1958

The “Stone Face” of Racism

On October 17, 1961, Parisian police attacked a group of Algerians. The event would be lost to French history until a Nazi collaborator was exposed.
Figurine: The Eros terracotta figurine from Tel Kedesh, front and back views 

Source: P. Lanyi; courtesy Sharon Herbert and Andrea Berlin, Tel Kedesh Excavations.

The Archaeological Mystery of Tel Kedesh

Was a well-preserved set of game pieces and other childhood items buried by a young woman before she got married?
Ruins of a Roman aqueduct in Tunisia

Fixing the Aqueduct from Hell

The Roman engineer Nonius Datus thought the project was in good shape when he left Saldae. He would return.
Group portrait of European refugees saved by the Emergency Rescue Committee on board the Paul-Lemerle, a converted cargo ship sailing from Marseilles to Martinique

The World War II Escape Route from France to Martinique

After the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940, some refugees tried to make it out through the Caribbean.
Ancient Roman slave-collar

Slave Collars in Ancient Rome

The objects purported to speak for the wearer: "Hold me! I have run away."
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Chess_Game_-_Sofonisba_Anguissola.jpg

Catherine de’ Medici Was Good at Chess

The game was a way for early modern women in royal courts to prove their skill in political life.
Engraved portrait of George Washington Williams

George Washington Williams and the Origins of Anti-Imperialism

Initially supportive of Belgian King Leopold II’s claim to have created a “free state” of Congo, Williams changed his mind when he saw the horrors of empire.
A British soldier training in 1941

The Bayonet: What’s the Point?

According to one scholar, the military sees training in this obsolete weapon as helpful on the modern battlefield.
Galen by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Library Fires Have Always Been Tragedies. Just Ask Galen.

When Rome burned in 192 CE, the city's vibrant community of scholars was devastated. The physician Galen described the scale of the loss.