Hy-Brasil is a mysterious island appearing on maps from 1325 to the 1800s. In Irish myth, it was said to be clouded in mist except for one day every seven years, when it became visible but still...
Science Daily It is not very common to find representations of scenes instead of individual figures in Paleolithic art, but it is even harder for these figures to be birds instead of mammals such as...
Scientists in Japan believe that they have moved closer to bringing the extinct woolly mammoth back to life. Researchers from Kindai University in Osaka have found some genetic material that they...
The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious illustrated hand-written vellum codex in a currently unidentified written and visual code. However, according to a non-peer reviewed paper published in John's...
Aebbe (615-668 AD) was a powerful Anglo Saxon pagan princess who became an abbess and then a saint for having been instrumental in spreading Christianity along the north east coast of what is today...
Lia Fáil is a carved standing stone on the Hill of Tara. Legends say this Stone of Destiny roared at the touch of a true king, making it the coronation stone for the High Kings of Ireland from the...
Orbelian’s Caravanserai (known previously as the Selim Caravanserai) is a caravanserai located in Vayots Dzor, a province in the southeastern part of Armenia . According to a dedicatory inscription,...
By Anna Liesowska, The Siberian Times With its evocative main face and O-shaped mouth, its mysterious zigzag etched lines, the Shigir Idol is now accepted as one of the world’s oldest examples of...
During the 19th century, the members of the British upper class engaged in a peculiar form of entertainment known as laughing gas parties. Such parties involved the inhalation of nitrous oxide (N 2 O...
The Copper Scroll is part of the extraordinary cache of 1st Century documents first discovered in caves at Qumran , popularly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Copper Scroll, however, is very...
Until recently it was thought the bra as we know it evolved in the 1900s as a garment known as a bust improver. But a surprising discovery was made that pushed back the existence of the bra 600 years...
Water created worlds, bore deities, eliminated pain and purified souls. The sea in particular is an untamable, dangerous, often violent place and considered in many cultures as representing the...
In the early second millennium BC, the city-states of Mesopotamia thrived in the so-called “Ur III period.” Assuming political frameworks previously abandoned in times of chaos, the rulers of the...
The Milesians are a legendary race of people mentioned in the Lebor Gabála Érenn (‘ The Book of the Taking of Ireland ’). According to this work, which attained its current structure during the 11 th...
Wrapped in a newspaper and forgotten in the corner of a dusty attic in a townhouse in the English county of Berkshire, a couple have discovered a hoard of highly-valuable gold-encrusted swords and...
Tsali was a Cherokee folk hero who sacrificed his life for his people. They were in hiding from the US government who had ordered the removal of the Cherokee from their native lands. Tsali, known...
The White Lady of Kinsale is a famous Irish ghost story. The tragic tale takes place in Charles Fort, where people have seen the phantom of a young bride wandering the site where she and her beloved...
In many ancient cultures and religious traditions, rulers and elite members of society not only had wives, they also had concubines. Concubines normally served a dual purpose – to increase a man’s...
When we think of fairies many of the more popular tales tend to have an almost playful nature but it would be wrong to assume that this is means that fairies are always benign. Many accounts within...
Adolf Frederick was a Swedish king who lived during the 18 th century. Although Adolf Frederick ruled Sweden for almost 20 years, it was unremarkable and nothing of great note took place during his...
A recent discovery is demonstrating the influence of Islamic medicine on European physicians. A fragment from a book dating from the 1400s has revealed the influence of a Muslim Persian polymath on...
The Muisca civilization flourished in ancient Colombia between 600 and 1600 BC. Their territory included what is the modern city of Bogotá and its surrounding area and they are renowned for being the...
Located on a picturesque hilltop six miles south of Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh, is one of the world’s most mysterious and misunderstood buildings - Rosslyn Chapel. This tiny Scottish church...
Amy Froide / The Conversation One of the challengers at this year’s Oscars was “ The Favourite ,” a film set in the early 18th-century court of British monarch Queen Anne . Focusing on the political...
