HISTORY

Shortly before her death, the author sent her 8-year-old niece a New Year's greeting—written entirely backwards.

The ship arrived in Alabama in 1859 in defiance of a law that prohibited importing slaves to the U.S. To hide the evidence of its illegal venture, its captain burned and sunk the ship, and its wreck has been lost to history. Until now.

In Paris, women styled their hair “à la rhinocéros,” with ribbons or feathers simulating a horn atop their heads.

The fragile 11th century artwork hasn't left France for nearly 1000 years.

It was a much more adventurous process than you'd think.

Poe's Balloon Hoax was the 19th century equivalent of fake news.

Whether it's a king kidnapping children or a government hunting heads for a construction project, don’t believe everything you read—or everything you hear.

With a healthy dose of fashion and confidence, these styles could still look just as fabulous today.

That fact that Benedict Arnold defected to the British Army in 1780 is common knowledge. But before he switched allegiances, he led a pretty interesting life.

As an optometrist working in turn-of-the-20th-century San Francisco, George Mayerle encountered plenty of immigrant patients who weren't comfortable reading Roman scripts. So he made a whole new test for them.

The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defined 414,825 words. The problem? They forgot one.

New exhibition explores a time when hair wasn't simply for heads.