There’s a lot to be learned about the origins of HIV, especially if we ever want a full-on cure. Hopefully there will be some progress sooner rather than later.
Over 100 years of mystery has surrounded one of the world’s most talked about murder mysteries, Jack the Ripper, and now his confirmed identity can be revealed, thanks to modern DNA testing.
In the market for an island? If you don’t mind ghosts, the occasional possession, a morbid back story and loads of corpses, this island just off of Venice, Italy, could be just the fixer-upper you’ve been looking for.
Microsoft has recently shelved its famous operating system, Windows XP. Let’s take a trip down memory lane: here’s the story behind XP’s iconic default background, “Bliss.”
Two historians claim they have found the Holy Grail, not sitting in a long forgotten tomb or cave filled with snakes, but in a museum. But maybe it’s too much bling for a carpenter to afford.
Game of Throne’s bloody violencethat we love so deeply pales in comparison to the real-life historical tale of medieval England. Dragons? Nope. White snow zombies that no one seems to be taking notice of? Nope. But heaps of beheadings, disembowelments, torture, massacres, killing prostitutes, assassinations, dinner parties that end in everyone dead, noble families that tend to have very bad luck at keeping their heads attached to their torsos and a couple of royals all fighting for the throne? Sure.
Microsoft, in conjunction with the Computer History Museum, are making the source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and version 2.0 available to the public for the first time ever. Alongside the DOS source code, Microsoft is also revealing the source code for Word 1.1a, which was released back in 1989.
A letter allegedly penned by a survivor of the Titanic on 8 August, 1955 – more than 43 years after the disaster, has recently surfaced. It depicts the first hand-account of French maid, Rose Amelie Icard’s harrowing experience of the Titanic’s demise.
As the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continues, its mysterious disappearance has captured the world’s attention. Check out a couple of aviation mysteries from the past.
’12 Years a Slave’ might be the talk of the town after winning Best Picture at this year’s Oscars, but back in 1853 interest in the life story of Solomon Northup was just as high. 161 years ago the New York Times did an article on Northup’s experience as a slave for 12 years. They dedicated an entire page to Northup, summarizing the story of free man being kidnapped and sold into slavery.
Film’s have often romanticized the lives of the famous ancient warriors. But the truth of the matter remains; they were slaves housed in fortress prisons. The gladiator school discovered outside of Vienna, Austria, is the first one discovered outside the city of Rome.
Hitler’s life has been well documented and debated. Many an author and historian has tried their hand at describing and examining the rise to power of the nondescript, failed artist capable of brainwashing millions of people.
When it sank to the bottom of the ocean, the Titanic took many secrets along with it. But one secret, now labelled as ‘the Titanic’s last mystery’ has just been cracked.
In the past, the Dutch were always credited for being the first Europeans to land on Australian shores, when they arrived at the land down under in 1606.
The game of Monopoly has been around for longer than most of us have lived (apologies if your are, in fact, 80).
The legacy of Nelson Mandela all too easily overshadows the reality of the person he was. At the end of the day, he was a simple man who saw the wrong in the world, and committed himself to undoing it by any means.
The world lost one of its greatest sons last night at 8:50 PM. Since then, news stations, politicians and celebrities have been pouring out tributes for South Africa’s former president.
This is a truly sad day for us all. Some may have woken to the news of Mandela’s passing, while others may have struggled to sleep after hearing the news last night. Either way, we have all been affected. We are all involved. We all feel this loss.
You see and use these symbols every day – but do you have any idea where they come from? Believe it or now, many of the UI symbols that have become second nature to us actually have a meaning derived from nature, history, and psychology. Some of these symbols were specifically designed with the user […]
The swastika has become one of the most infamous and easily-recognisable symbols on earth, and that process didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen by chance. A new series of photographs gives us a glimpse into how the symbol was systematically jammed into the minds of millions.
A haunting photograph has been uncovered from the possessions of an officer on board the Mackay Bennett that shows the victims of the disaster being buried at sea. Records show that 166 out of 306 victims’ bodies, which were collected by the Mackay Bennett, were buried at sea, but no images have been seen until now.
Gaming pieces have been uncovered in a 5,000 year-old burial site in Turkey. They could be the oldest gaming pieces found, ever. Small sculpted stones in the shapes of pigs, dogs, pyramids, dice, and so on were found in the site that was inhabited as early as 7,000 BC.
This is impressive. 4,000 years of world history have been condensed to fit onto a single map, created by John B. Sparks and printed in 1931 by Rand McNally. The 1,5 metre map was advertised as “clear, vivid and shorn of elabouration”. The Histomap displays four thousand year’s of World history, and with the use of colour empahised “how the power of various ‘peoples’ evolved throughout history”.
It is believed that Oskar Schindler saved the lives of Jews that worked in his factories during World War II. The list detailing the Jewish refugees that Schindler saved has been placed on eBay for auction.
In 2003, on the remote island of Flores in Indonesia, an 18,000 year-old fossil was discovered of Homo Floresiensis, a humanoid, one metre high. The discovery of the fossil led researchers to believe that they were a unique species of human, and not in fact deformed.
It’s official! Since August 2012, archeologists have suspected that the lost remains of the last English king to be slain in battle, King Richard III were buried a few feet beneath a rather ordinary parking lot in Leicester. Richard’s ruin was smote upon the fields of Battle Bosworth in 1485 at the tender age of […]
It was the reason America and Britain used to go to war in Iraq: Weapons of Mass Destruction. The CIA have finally declassified documents that show how the intelligence agency were bamboozled into believing Saddam Hussein had any.
Controversy surrounding no-longer-anonymous Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette has peaked because his book about his account of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden is now for sale. Here’s an interesting summary of what he says went down.
Imagine working on a construction site right in the heart of one of Germany’s largest cities, and suddenly coming across a large, rusty, unidentified object. Trying to figure out what the large, 250kg object is, you ask your foreman. You learn that it’s a bomb, left over from when the Allies bombed the shit out of you, 70 years ago.