Arsenic, a silent but deadly weapon, has stained history with its ominous presence. From ancient Rome to the 19th century, this odorless and tasteless poison has claimed countless lives. Arsenic's...
Amid the vast palette of colors that grace our world, some hues have more intriguing origins than others. Nestled within Harvard University lies the Forbes pigment collection, a treasury of...
Makeup has been around for centuries, but getting your glam on in ancient times wasn’t as simple as going to your local Sephora. Before safe and regulated products existed on the market, ancient...
Wallpaper isn’t as popular as it once was, and perhaps the reason for its fall from fashion was its ability to kill! In the Victorian Era, a brilliant green-colored pigment proved popular in wall...
There has long been speculation about the true cause of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death on the island of St. Helena on May 5, 1821. As we mark the 200th anniversary of this event, a biochemist from De...
Iron Age silver forgeries have been identified by a team of Israeli researchers. This might illustrate the economic hardships of the Tribes of Israel and their decision to make fake silver...
Cornwall, in south-west England, has a distinctive regional character. Much of the landscape was transformed in the 18th and early 19th centuries as a result of the rapid growth of copper and tin...
The House of Hanover (formally known as the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Hanover line) is a German royal house that came to rule Great Britain. The Hanoverians, as they are known, gained the British...
Throughout history, ancient civilizations have been using all kinds of ingenious ways to create pigments for the coloring of clothing, objects and even buildings. While some of the pigments were...
Wallpaper isn’t as popular as it once was, and perhaps the reason for this falling out of fashion was its ability to kill! In 1778, a Swedish Chemist named Carl Scheele created a brilliant green...
Some may remember the deadly book of Aristotle that plays a vital part in the plot of Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose . Poisoned by a mad Benedictine monk, the book wreaks havoc in a...
An international team of Serbian and UK researchers claim to have developed a Cu-As-Sn (Copper-Arsenic-Tin) color ternary diagram, which will help scientists to uncover the original colors of ancient...
Previous studies have established that people of numerous pre-Columbian civilizations in northern Chile suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning between 500 and 1450 AD, through consumption of...
A team of scientists have discovered that people of numerous pre-Columbian civilizations in northern Chile, including the Incas and the Chinchorro culture, suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning...
