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The vast, sparsely populated territory of New France, which occupied much of what became the United States and Canada, was a lonely place for men in the 1600s. The king of France, Louis XIV , wanted his colonies to succeed, but he thought he needed white Europeans to establish a thriving, prosperous New World and compete with the English and Dutch. So, in 1663 he started sending young women to marry the French pioneers, put down roots, and to help populate the country. These women were called filles du roi, (daughters of the king) or the King’s Wards. They were single women, most of whom were never married and some widows. Most of them were orphans or destitute women from

Ancient Romans reportedly ingested the brains of a bream called the dreamfish to get high, and modern scholarly studies have confirmed the toxicity and hallucination-inducing qualities of the Sarpa salpa bream. Hallucinogenic fish live in the Mediterranean Sea, near the Hawaiian and other Polynesian islands in the Pacific Ocean and are also present in the Indian and Atlantic oceans. The fish is part of the diet of the people of Tunisia, France and Israel but is deemed uneatable in Spain and Italy. There are eight families of bream fish and more than 15 species worldwide that get people intoxicated if they eat the brains of the fish or don’t clean the guts out of the body cavity right away. It

Thanksgiving observances predate the feast of the year 1621 shared by the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. Several myths have developed around the holiday feast that we call Thanksgiving, including what was on the original menu. European thanksgiving celebrations originally entailed a period of fasting, quiet reflection and prayer. They were separate from harvest celebrations that included feasting and rejoicing. Native Americans also have traditions of thanksgiving celebrations. The 101 Pilgrims, including some children, who left England in 1620 for the east coast of the new Promised Land, as they called it, faced a difficult journey of 66 days on rough seas. They arrived in November, just in time for a harsh winter. They were

After a couple of hundred years of Viking raids, payments of tens of thousands of pounds of silver in protection money, and conquests over the Anglo-Saxons, by the year 1002 it seems King Aethelred II of Wessex in Southern England was nearing the end of his tether. But what apparently really led him to send out his kill-all order were rumors that the Danes were plotting his and his council’s death. In response to this supposed threat, Aethelred ordered his people to kill every Danish man on English soil. It is unclear how many Danish Vikings perished in the massacre, which was carried out on Nov. 13, 1002, St. Brice’s feast day. Archaeologists have recently been studying two mass graves

Some of humanity's strangest stories come from mythology, and some of the strangest myths of all involve love and sex. Myths from around the world tell stories involving sex and love between gods and humans and sometimes other creatures. These stories often involve a lot of pathos and sometimes violence and revenge. We hereby present a list of 10 strange myths that are too strange to be true but that may contain kernels of truths about human or divine nature. Sexuality and Nudity in Ancient Mesoamerica Pleasure, Procreation, and Punishment: Shocking Facts about Sex and Marriage in the Ancient World 10. Who enjoys sex more: men or women? Zeus and Hera, heads of the Greek pantheon, got into an argument

Some of the world’s earliest-known graffiti artists in Italy carved into rock tens of thousands of images from the mundane to the mystical, recording scenes from the twilight of the Stone Age to the dawn of civilization. A Walk Amongst the Petroglyphs of Galicia: Prehistoric Designs Trace Life and Times of Bronze Age Europeans 4,000-Year-Old Rock Art From Unknown Culture Uncovered in Venezuela The artists who carved the Valcamonica rock art depicted animals, scenes of hunting and fishing, weapons and tools, war, magic, buildings, agriculture, and human and divine figures. The people left a rich heritage of petroglyphs in Lombardy from which scholars are learning about the ways of life, economies, beliefs and societies of people in the Palaeolithic, Neolithic

Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent used war and conquest to expand the Ottoman Empire during his bloody but prosperous reign in the 16th century. In addition to the honorific ‘the Magnificent’, he is also known as ‘the Lawgiver’. He was the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of the world for 623 years. During his 45 years as sultan, from 1520 to 1566, Suleiman ordered two of his sons slain (one by strangulation); killed an official of his government who had been a long-time friend; ruled a society rife with slavery; and killed multitudes with his wars. Yet society remembers Suleiman as “the Magnificent.” It is said that the victors write history. Perhaps they also bestow their own

The people of the ancient Minoan civilization on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea enjoyed a sophisticated society that included fine art, agriculture, writing systems, royal palaces, and an apparent board game that indicates a life of leisure and recreation for at least some of the residents. The Cretan businessman and antiquarian Minos Kalokairinos began excavating the Bronze Age ruins in the 1870s, about 3,100 years after Minoan society first flourished. He studied the palace at Knossos in 1878. Twenty-one years later, Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist, took over the excavations and did a richly detailed study of Minoan society. It was Evans who coined the term “Minoan,” after King Minos of Greek myth. The Enigmatic Ancient Royal

A Norse burial site in Denmark from around the year 940 contains the remains of a woman of high status whom experts believe was a seeress or völva. Such women held a special place in society and commanded the attention of Viking kings, warriors and even the gods. Witches, called völur, are mentioned in some of the old Norse manuscripts. This grave contains the body of a woman who has been dubbed the Seeress of Fyrkat. She was buried with items that indicate she may have practiced seid or sorcery. The völur were known to seduce men, and for this reason some deemed them dangerous. The goddess Freya was also known as a seducer, and she may have been a

Around 5,500 years ago, a large settlement of farmers, artisans and miners who traded around Asia along the proto-Silk Road sprang up in what is now Tajikistan. For some reason we may never know, the oldest and most advanced city in that part of the world collapsed about 1,600 years later, leaving remnants of a sophisticated community that was first unearthed in the 1970s. The ruins of that community we now call Sarazm. It came to light in 1970 when a resident of a nearby village found a small bronze ax-adze while digging. He waited six years to inform an archaeologist in nearby Panjakent, after which excavations began. Precious Ancient Fabrics from the ‘Israeli Silk Road’ Found in a Trash