Stuff You Missed in History Class

People knew how to find their north-south position even before we had the idea of “latitude.” But once people lost sight of land, they didn’t [Read more]

The Teatro alla Scala is one of the most renowned opera houses in the world, and is Italy’s crown jewel of the arts. Even if [Read more]

He’s most famous for selling an iconic structure he didn’t own, but Robert Miller, known better by his alias Count Victor Lustig, led a life [Read more]

Pigments and dyes have come from all manner of animals, vegetables and minerals. From ochre to cochineal red to the rarest of purples, color has [Read more]

In the mid-20th century, one ad company had a wacky plan to actually dole out land deeds as part of a cereal promotion. How did [Read more]

“Black Wall Street” was a nickname for Greenwood, a vibrant suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was destroyed in a race riot in 1921. And while [Read more]

In 1921, coal miners fed up with unfair labor practices and exploitation took up arms against their employers. The resulting conflict lasted five days and [Read more]

While the building of a population in a new colony seems like a tricky endeavor, France’s King Louis XIV launched a scheme to do just [Read more]

In the late 1700s, medical colleges needed cadavers for educational dissection, but there were no legal means for obtaining them. This led to some unorthodox [Read more]

Makeup has a rich and lengthy history that spans the globe and crosses cultures. From 10,000 B.C.E. to the 20th century, people have been using [Read more]