History.com Staff

On September 1, 1972, in what’s billed as the “Match of the Century,” American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky during the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland. In the world’s most publicized title match ever played, Fischer, a 29-year-old ...read more

From Episode 1: Resignation letter of Luis Elizondo Why did Luis Elizondo, director of the Pentagon's hush-hush program investigation UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena, step down from his post? "It was because of my allegiance to the Department of Defense and the American ...read more

Nearly as long as people have been recording history, they have documented sexual assaults. From the writings of ancient Greece to the Bible to the letters of early explorers, sexual violence has long been a brutal part of the human story. Some assaults have even changed the ...read more

• Curie was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, to schoolteacher parents of modest means who encouraged their children’s educational aspirations. Determined to pursue a scientific career, Marie struck a deal with her sister Bronya, agreeing to fund Bronya’s medical degree in ...read more

The untimely deaths of famous musicians at age 27 may be coincidence, but it is tragic coincidence. The mythology of the 27 Club gained prominence with the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 since he died at the same age as iconic rock musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin ...read more

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Many Americans on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic ills to Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the ...read more

When the United States first launched the “War on Drugs” in the mid-20th century, not even the cleverest conspiracy theorists could have imagined the far-reaching consequences the campaign would have around the world. From the CIA allowing drug traffickers to flourish in exchange ...read more

We’ve all heard stories about King Arthur of Camelot, who according to medieval legend led British forces (including his trusted Knights of the Round Table) in battle against Saxon invaders in the early sixth century. But was King Arthur actually a real person, or simply a hero ...read more

1. Thanks to J. Edgar Hoover, FBI directors are now term-limited. Hoover landed his first job with the Department of Justice in 1917 at just 22 and by 1924 had become the head of the FBI’s forerunner, the Bureau of Investigation. When Hoover died at 77, he had spent 48 years—62 ...read more

March 11-14, 1888 More than 120 winters have come and gone since the so-called “Great White Hurricane,” but this whopper of a storm still lives in infamy. After a stretch of rainy but unseasonably mild weather, temperatures plunged and vicious winds kicked up, blanketing the East ...read more

1. Seventy years after the end of World War II, we commemorated the Allies’ final push to Berlin and the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, explored Mussolini’s final hours, looked back at how the world celebrated V-E Day, met a Japanese engineer who survived two atomic bombs, and ...read more

1. Why was the Bill of Rights tacked onto the Constitution just three years after its ratification in June 1788? Essentially, anti-Federalist delegates objected to the proposed draft, arguing that it provided a framework for a new centralized government but failed to safeguard ...read more

Carl Feigenbaum According to one hypothesis, proposed by a retired English detective, Jack the Ripper was a German sailor named Carl Feigenbaum who was executed for murdering a New York woman in 1894. The detective, Trevor Marriott, a former member of the Bedfordshire homicide ...read more

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective with the knack for solving crimes through observation and reason was modeled after Dr. Joseph Bell, one of Conan Doyle’s medical school professors. Conan Doyle, born in Scotland in 1859, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh ...read more

Basketball is the only major American sport with a clearly identifiable inventor. James Naismith wrote the sport’s original 13 rules as part of a December 1891 class assignment at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) training school in Springfield, Massachusetts. Born and ...read more

1. Sappho Much uncertainty surrounds the life story of the celebrated Greek lyric poet Sappho, a woman Plato called “the tenth Muse.” Born around 610 B.C. on the island of Lesbos, now part of Greece, she was said to have been married to Cercylas, a wealthy man. Many legends have ...read more

1. There is no curse of King Tut. When Carter first entered King Tut’s lost tomb in November 1922, his financial backer George Herbert—a wealthy lord with a passion for Egyptology—was at his side. Four months later, Herbert died of apparent blood poisoning from an infected ...read more

1. John Adams When John Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755, the 19-year-old Massachusetts native found himself at a crossroads. As a child, he’d considered formal education tiresome and yearned to be like his father, a farmer. Now, however, he was torn between the ...read more

1. Rose Greenhow Known from a young age as “Wild Rose,” Rose O’Neal Greenhow ascended the ranks of Washington, D.C., society as the wife of a wealthy and prominent doctor. Her charmed life took a tragic turn in the 1850s, when her husband and five of their eight children died. In ...read more

1. Full moons make you crazy. Since ancient times, full moons have been associated with odd or insane behavior, including sleepwalking, suicide, illegal activity, fits of violence and, of course, transforming into werewolves. Indeed, the words “lunacy” and “lunatic” come from ...read more

1. Shakespeare’s father held a lot of different jobs, and at one point got paid to drink beer. The son of a tenant farmer, John Shakespeare was nothing if not upwardly mobile. He arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551 and began dabbling in various trades, selling leather goods, ...read more

Ancient Greeks According to certain iterations of the Greek calendar—they varied widely by region and era—the summer solstice was the first day of the year. Several festivals were held around this time, including Kronia, which celebrated the agriculture god Cronus. The strict ...read more

1. Ginger Nicknamed for its red hair, “Ginger” is the most famous of six naturally mummified bodies excavated in the late 19th century from shallow graves in the Egyptian desert. It went on display at the British Museum in 1901, becoming the first mummy to be exhibited in public, ...read more

Published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel “Dracula” launched an entire genre of literature and film about vampires, those sinister figures who use their supernatural powers to hunt humans and drink their blood. To create his immortal antihero, Count Dracula, Stoker certainly ...read more

The game we know as poker is believed to have ancient roots that go back nearly 1,000 years, crossing several continents and cultures. Some historians say poker’s origins can be traced to a domino-card game played by a 10th-century Chinese emperor; others claim it is a descendant ...read more

It’s hard to credit a single person with inventing the automobile. Not only did an estimated 100,000 patents lead to cars as we know them, but people also disagree on what qualifies as the first true automobile. For historians who think that early steam-powered road vehicles fit ...read more

Ward Hill Lamon—Abraham Lincoln’s former law partner, friend and sometime bodyguard—told a famous story about the 16th U.S. president’s premonition of his own death. According to the tale, just a few days before his assassination on April 14, 1865, Lincoln shared a recent dream ...read more

It’s one of the most famous quotes in history. At some point around 1789, when being told that her French subjects had no bread, Marie-Antoinette (bride of France’s King Louis XVI) supposedly sniffed, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”—“Let them eat cake.” With that callous remark, ...read more

Why did you decide to undertake this project? Presidential speeches are direct communications between the nation’s chief executive and the people of the country. They articulate policy and distill the president’s beliefs, and as such they literally make history. Since the ...read more

The origins of one of the America’s oldest unsolved mysteries can be traced to August 1587, when a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Later that year, it was decided that John White, governor of the new ...read more

In the early morning hours of July 17, 1918, Czar Nicholas II—the last monarch of the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia for 304 years—was reportedly executed along with his wife, Alexandra, and their five children by their Bolshevik captors in the basement of a house in ...read more

In 1751, the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly—part of the state’s colonial government—paid around 100 pounds for a large bell to hang in its new State House (later known as Independence Hall). Cast at London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the bell arrived in Philadelphia in August ...read more

One of history’s oldest unsolved mysteries is the identity of Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer who stalked and murdered at least five women in London’s East End in 1888. The brutality of the Ripper’s crimes—as well as Scotland Yard’s failure to solve the case—caused a ...read more

During its nearly 30 years of operation (from 1934 to 1963), the federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay housed some of America’s most notorious felons, including gangsters Al “Scarface” Capone and murderer Robert Stroud, the famous “Birdman of Alcatraz.” Dubbed ...read more

Fourteen athletes. Eleven Olympic championships. That’s an astounding performance, isn’t it? You said it. The American team left for Athens amid complete indifference from the U.S. public and without the support of either amateur athletic officials or even their colleges. Thrown ...read more

1678 Franciscan monk and explorer Louis Hennepin becomes the first European explorer to encounter Niagara Falls. Impressed, Hennepin estimates the falls to be an incredible 600 feet high—though in reality they rise 170 feet. Summer 1859 Jean François Gravelet-Blondin, known as ...read more

Early History Ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese myths feature fanciful accounts of transplants performed by gods and healers, often involving cadavers or animals. While these tales are considered apocryphal, by 800 B.C. Indian doctors had likely begun grafting skin—technically the ...read more

Ping-Pong Diplomacy, April 6-17, 1971 The invitation to play in China came as a surprise to members of the U.S. Table Tennis Team. While in Nagoya, Japan, for the World Table Tennis Championship, the team’s peers from China invited them for an all-expenses-paid trip to the ...read more

The first official Groundhog Day celebration took place on February 2, 1887, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The annual ritual has roots in pre-Christian traditions and was brought to the U.S. by German immigrants. The Beginning of Spring and Candlemas Falling midway between the ...read more

1. The Tuskegee Airmen once shot down three German jets in a single day. On March 24, 1944, a fleet of P-51 Mustangs led by Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, commander of the Tuskegee airmen, set out on the longest escort mission their crews would fly during World War II. The 43 ...read more

People in what is now Peru were eating popcorn as early as 6,700 years ago, according to researchers. Telltale traces of their snacking habits—ancient cobs, husks, stalks and tassels—were recently unearthed at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two coastal sites that were once home to ...read more

What does “Auld Lang Syne” mean, and why do we sing the song at midnight on New Year’s Eve? “Auld Lang Syne,” the title of a Scottish folk song that many English speakers sing at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, roughly translates to “days gone by.” The poet Robert Burns ...read more

Freddie Mercury Considered one of the greatest rock singers of all time, Freddie Mercury—born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar in 1946—fronted the influential British band Queen from 1970 until his death. He composed many of the group’s chart-topping hits, including “Bohemian ...read more

Mona Lisa Leaves the Louvre (1911) On August 21, 1911, an amateur painter set up his easel near the spot where Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”—one of the most famous works of art in the world—hung in the Louvre. To his surprise, the mysterious woman with the haunting half-smile ...read more

1. Butch Cassidy According to the traditional narrative, the American train and bank robber Butch Cassidy, leader of the Old West gang known as the Wild Bunch, died in a hail of bullets in Bolivia in 1908. But rumors that the notorious bandit (who is seated on the far right in ...read more