Stuff You Missed in History Class

There is actually some disagreement about the actual origin point of ice cream, but almost everyone agrees it’s delicious. The real origin story is a [Read more]

It was the only planet to have been discovered by an American, but it’s no longer classified as a planet. Who found Pluto, and how [Read more]

An accomplished bacteriologist, Selman Waksman and his students and colleagues isolated many new antibiotics in the 1940s, including streptomycin and neomycin, earning him the nickname [Read more]

Boudica was a queen of the Iceni who staged either a successful rebellion against the Romans or a massacre, depending on who’s talking. Learn more [Read more]

A member of the South Australian Mounted Police, George “Poddy” Aiston was a friend to and advocate for Aboriginal peoples, a fairly accomplished photographer, and [Read more]

Felicia the ferret, who helped Fermilab in the early ’70s, has been popping up in online stories and social media lately. How did she come [Read more]

The Luddite uprising was a series of protests in northern England, in which workers smashed machines in mills and factories. This wasn’t the first organized [Read more]

While his last name is famous for breakfast cereal, John Harvey Kellogg was a 19th-century doctor with some unique (and groundbreaking) beliefs about health and [Read more]

Long before Czech playwright Karel Capek coined the term “robot” in his 1920 play “R.U.R.,” mechanized creations — automata — were being created without electronics [Read more]

She’s often referred to as a cursed ghost ship. The history of the Mary Celeste features one unfortunate incident after another. While this vessel is [Read more]