HISTORY

Mount Everest’s bitter temperatures, unpredictable weather, icy terrain, and lack of oxygen make climbing it so difficult, in fact, that many don’t survive to tell the tale.

The reason maple syrup bottles have little handles involves the word 'skeuomorph.'

Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn. The reason isn’t because Scotland is a nation of unicorn lovers; rather, it’s thanks to the country’s bygone kings.

The phrase has evolved somewhat since its first uses—and its origin is something of a mystery.

Asking a police officer “do you drink?” in the 1970s had nothing to do with grabbing a beer at a nearby bar.

Millennial women across the United States will remember rushing to their mailboxes after school to grab the hottest catalog of the ‘90s: dELiA*s.

Picasso and his Blue Period have nothing on Yves Klein, who created art almost exclusively in a shade of his own invention.

Old English had a rich array of inventive and intriguing words, many of which have either long since dropped out of use or were replaced.

The Irei Project and Ancestry have teamed up to publish the most comprehensive list ever assembled of the more than 125,000 Japanese Americans who were incarcerated on American soil during WWII.

You’ve probably grown up your entire life without putting much thought into the nursery rhymes drilled into your head. But there are tales behind each of them—some pretty dark.

‘Les Femmes d’Alger’ (‘Women of Algiers’) isn’t a single artwork, but a series of 15 paintings—though one is more famous than the others.

In the scope of human history, the wheel is actually a rather young creation. Beer, clothing, and jewelry are much older.