In August 1943, the USS Abner Read struck a Japanese naval mine while conducting patrols in the Bering Sea. The explosion sheared the ship’s entire stern section, sending it and 71 U.S. sailors to the bottom of the Bering Sea. Lost for 75 years, the World War II destroyer’s severed stern has finally been found off a…
The indigenous people of Easter Island, the Rapa Nui, experienced a societal collapse after the 17th century because they stripped the island clean of its natural resources. Or at least, that’s the leading theory. An analysis of the tools used by the Rapa Nui to build their iconic stone statues suggests a very…
For a while, the History channel has focused its extraterrestrial coverage on that guy with weird hair who throws his hands into the sky and shouts: “Aliens!” Now, they’re getting into sci-fi, but sci-fi inspired by supposedly real UFO cases. We’re here to open up those case files—and see if aliens are interested in…
A missing Russian Imperial Navy cruiser said to contain 200 tons of gold bullion worth an estimated $133 billion has been discovered after being lost at sea for 113 years.
In Project Blue Book, Game of Thrones’ Aiden Gillen plays a skeptical investigator of all things alien. But as this first trailer for the Hstory Channel’s new drama series shows, it turns out that deep down, he wants to believe.
The first real film based on a Marvel/DC character was 1966's Batman: The Movie, starring Adam West’s campy version of the Caped Crusader. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam), and Captain America all had weekly, live-action serials shown in theaters, while the first Zorro movie…
Something is toxic in the state of Denmark, as a pair of researchers recently discovered while archiving books at a university library.
Last month, archaeologists in Italy found the skeletal remains of a Pompeii resident who apparently had his head crushed by a giant rock while fleeing the eruption some 2,000 years ago. The victim’s skull has now been recovered, and its surprisingly pristine condition suggests an alternative cause of death.
There’s a new docudrama coming out tomorrow about the life of Ulugh Beg, an obscure medieval astronomer who made Samarkand, now Uzbekistan, a thriving center of culture and science in the 15th century.
Are you dying to find out why most TV shows, comic books, novels, and even some movies end on cliffhangers? Tune in next week! Or now—that works too. io9's Beth Elderkin dives into the thousand-year history behind cliffhanger endings, from the early days of Persian folklore to Charles Dickens, The Perils of Pauline,…
It was 50 years ago this month that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin. In what is now the first study of its kind, a team of specialists has conducted a systematic review of the medical care he received during the critical hours following the shooting. Their findings offer unprecedented details about…
You’ve seen video of the Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey from that flame-filled day in 1937. But what about the zeppelins that didn’t crash? How did they work and what did people imagine they would do to revolutionize air travel?
Solo: A Star Wars Story is about a young man lured into a life of smuggling and thievery. Deadpool 2 stars an actual murderer. Why do we admire heroes who commit crimes? On the latest episode of That Looks Familiar, Beth Elderkin shares the stories of real-life “Lovable Rogues” from history and looks at what happens…
To the victor go the spoils, or in some cases, the bodies of a vanquished enemy, as the discovery of remnants from an Iron Age battle in Denmark demonstrates.
We tend to associate industrial pollution with the modern era, but human civilizations have been contaminating the planet for thousands of years. By drilling deep into Greenland’s ice sheet, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has chronicled the industrial waste produced by the ancient Greeks and Romans over a…
Leprosy is one of the oldest known diseases to afflict humans, yet its origin is mired in controversy. A new study, in which 10 strains of the disease were detected in the remains medieval Europeans, is now complicating the picture even further by pointing to western Europe as a potential launching point for leprosy.…
Sylvester McCoy’s era on Doctor Who has always gotten a bit of a bad rap. After all, it’s the period of the show that eventually saw Doctor Who go on hiatus for decades. With the gift of hindsight, it’s easy to see the good and fascinating things this era of the show did, but apparently audiences at the time really, …
Scientists in Sweden have completed a preliminary investigation of one of the most disturbing archaeological sites to be uncovered in recent memory. Over 1,500 years ago, scores of villagers were mercilessly killed in their homes by an unknown band of marauders, who left the bodies where they fell. And inexplicably,…
In the dying days of World War II, a German sub was reportedly sunk near the Danish coast, but the wreck was never found, leading to speculation that high-ranking Nazi officials—even possibly Adolf Hitler himself—used the high-tech vessel to escape to South America. A museum in Denmark has finally found the missing…
The term “Asperger’s syndrome” will never be heard the same way again, owing to new research showing that Hans Asperger—the Austrian pediatrician for whom the disorder was named—was an active participant in the Nazi eugenics program, recommending that patients deemed “not fit for life” be sent to a notorious…
