History

The human past — events, eras, empires, and the conflicts that shaped them.

All Ancient Medieval Modern War & Conflict Empires & Civilizations Archaeology

History Modern

The 1918 flu killed more people than the First World War

75 sec read

History War & Conflict

In 1983, one Soviet officer's hunch may have stopped a nuclear war

65 sec read

History Medieval

Two Italian cities fought a deadly medieval war — and the winners carried off a wooden bucket they still display

60 sec read

History Medieval

One Baghdad scholar gave us both 'algebra' and 'algorithm'

65 sec read

History Ancient

The Antikythera Mechanism: a 2,000-year-old analog computer

75 sec read

History Modern

The first crewed Moon landing happened on July 20, 1969

75 sec read

History Ancient

Babylonian astronomers used proto-calculus to track Jupiter

75 sec read

History Medieval

The Black Death killed up to half of Europe

75 sec read

History War & Conflict

Breaking the Enigma code may have shortened WWII by years

75 sec read

History Ancient

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid

60 sec read

History Ancient

The first writing was invented to keep accounts

70 sec read

History Modern

The Berlin Wall fell after a garbled press conference in 1989

75 sec read

History Empires & Civilizations

Genghis Khan may be the direct male-line ancestor of about 1 in 200 men alive today

65 sec read

History Medieval

Cologne Cathedral took 632 years to build — across dozens of generations

65 sec read

History Medieval

Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire

60 sec read

History Archaeology

Pompeii's famous body casts are plaster poured into human-shaped holes

65 sec read

History Ancient

Romans heated their homes and baths with underfloor central heating

65 sec read

History Archaeology

The Rosetta Stone unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs by repeating one decree in three scripts

70 sec read

History Ancient

The Library of Alexandria didn't die in a single dramatic fire

70 sec read

History War & Conflict

The shortest war in history lasted under 40 minutes

40 sec read

History Modern

Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 — but not slavery itself

45 sec read

History Empires & Civilizations

The British Empire was the largest in history

45 sec read

History Ancient

Çatalhöyük: a 9,000-year-old town with no streets

45 sec read

History War & Conflict

Enemy soldiers stopped fighting to share Christmas in 1914

50 sec read

History War & Conflict

D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in history

45 sec read

History Ancient

Eratosthenes measured the Earth with a stick and a shadow

45 sec read

History Modern

The 1861 telegraph linked America coast to coast — and killed the Pony Express

40 sec read

History Archaeology

Gobekli Tepe's stone temples predate Stonehenge, farming and pottery

45 sec read

History Medieval

Gutenberg's Bible launched mass printing in Europe

40 sec read

History War & Conflict

The Hundred Years' War actually lasted 116 years

45 sec read

History Empires & Civilizations

The Inca ran a 24,000-mile road empire without writing or the wheel

40 sec read

History Medieval

Korea printed a book with movable metal type 78 years before Gutenberg

40 sec read

History Empires & Civilizations

Mali's Mansa Musa gave away so much gold he wrecked Cairo's economy

40 sec read

History Empires & Civilizations

The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire ever

45 sec read

History Modern

New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, in 1893

40 sec read

History Archaeology

Otzi the Iceman is a 5,300-year-old murder victim preserved in glacier ice

45 sec read

History Empires & Civilizations

Persia's Royal Road carried a message 1,500 miles in nine days

45 sec read

History Archaeology

Radiocarbon dating reads a built-in clock that starts ticking at death

45 sec read

History Archaeology

Tutankhamun's tomb was found nearly intact in 1922 — with about 5,000 objects

40 sec read

History Medieval

Vikings reached America 500 years before Columbus

40 sec read

History War & Conflict

World War II is the deadliest conflict in human history

50 sec read

◆ On this day

On this day in History

Browse all 229 by date →

15 Jun 1215

History Medieval

King John sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede

50 sec read

6 Aug 1945

History War & Conflict

The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima

45 sec read

12 Oct 1492

History Modern

Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas

45 sec read

16 Oct 1793

History Modern

Marie Antoinette was guillotined during the French Revolution

45 sec read

26 Nov 1922

History Archaeology

Howard Carter peered into Tutankhamun's tomb and saw "wonderful things"

45 sec read

7 Dec 1941

History War & Conflict

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, pulling the U.S. into World War II

45 sec read

17 Jan 1773

History Modern

Captain Cook's ship first crosses the Antarctic Circle

50 sec read

18 Jan 1778

History Modern

Captain Cook becomes the first European to reach Hawaii

45 sec read

24 Jan 1848

History Modern

Gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill, sparking the Gold Rush

45 sec read

26 Jan 1788

History Modern

The First Fleet arrives, founding the colony of Australia

45 sec read

26 Jan 1500

History Modern

Vicente Pinzón becomes the first European to reach Brazil

45 sec read

27 Jan 1945

History War & Conflict

Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp

45 sec read