Stuff You Missed in History Class

In the mid-1800s, Mary Ann Cotton is believed to have poisoned as many as 21 people with arsenic, many of them her own children. She [Read more]

Calamity Jane is one of those historical figures whose reputation has in many ways eclipsed the real story. But she was, without a doubt, a [Read more]

The Royal Palaces of Abomey are a series of earthen palaces in what is now Benin. The complex is culturally and historically important to West [Read more]

Diogenes of Sinope was the father of the Cynicism school of philosophy. He was also an incredibly eccentric figure who spoke out against pretense, and [Read more]

In 1888, Cecil Rhodes and John Smith Moffat duped the king of the Ndebele people into a treaty which led to the expansion of British [Read more]

Peanut butter got its name in the 18th century, but it’s been around in some form for hundreds and hundreds of years. The more modern [Read more]

In the 19th and 20th centuries, 150,000 child migrants were sent from Britain to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Rhodesia. Many of these children ended [Read more]

Dr. Virginia Apgar broke new ground in the fields of obstetrics and anesthesiology in the middle of the 20th century. When babies are born today, [Read more]

The deceptively simple harmonica has roots as far back as ancient China, though it really came into its own in Europe in the 1800s. Learn [Read more]

In 1851, Olive Oatman’s family was attacked while traveling near the Gila River in Arizona. Olive was taken by her attackers, and lived for five [Read more]