A coffinette for the viscera of Tutankhamun

Was It Really a Mummy’s Curse?

A slew of mysterious deaths following the opening of King Tut's tomb prompted one epidemiologist to investigate.
archaeologists Franck Goddio and his team inspect the colossal red granite statue of a pharaoh of over 5 metres height, weighing 5.5 tons, and shattered into 5 fragments. It was found close to the great temple of sunken Heracleion.

The Lost City of Heracleion

Once a bustling metropolis, this long-lost Egyptian city flooded, sank, and was forgotten -- until archeologists rediscovered it.
Großer Garten in Dresden

Regrowing Germany’s Trees After WWII

The cities of Dresden and Hamburg saw their green spaces decimated by WWII, but each city grew back its trees in a very different way.
Illustration of Ferdinand Magellan

The Pirate-y Life of Ferdinand Magellan

Magellan’s voyage in search of the “Spice Islands” was marked by storms, sharks, and scurvy—plus multiple attempts at mutiny.
Bar in Hotel Scribe by Floyd MacMillan Davis

How Janet Flanner’s “High-Class Gossip” Changed America

The journalist's witty Paris Letters for the New Yorker helped establish Americans' feelings of superiority over Europe.
Paris catacombs

How the Paris Catacombs Solved a Cemetery Crisis

One of the most popular tourist destinations in Paris—the Catacombs—was started as a solution to the intrusion of death upon daily life.
The Shinkansen N700A Series Set G13 high speed train travelling at approximately 300 km/h through Himeji Station, Japan

Will the U.S. Ever Catch a High-Speed Train?

Over 20 countries have high-speed train travel, carrying 1.6 billion passengers a year. The United States is lagging behind.
The Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in St. Augustine, FL

Should Museums Display Shrunken Heads?

Tsantsas, or shrunken human heads, remind us of how museums have often been founded on a violent trade in indigenous culture.
Zumbi by Antônio Parreiras

Brazil’s Maroon State

For nearly a century, Quilombo of Palmares was an Afro-Brazilian state, populated and run by people who had freed themselves from slavery.
World War 1 soldiers wearing gas masks

The Amoral Scientist

Fritz Haber was a chemist who made discoveries that improved global agriculture… but also helped spawn the modern era of chemical warfare.