Who’s the better U.S. President? Barack Obama? Or the little-known Rutherford B. Hayes? Battle of the Presidents: Barack Obama vs. Rutherford B. Hayes? In what promises to be the strangest President vs. President battle of 2012, President Obama knocked President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) yesterday over his apparent dislike of the telephone. “One of my…
On June 6, 1505, Leonardo da Vinci began to paint The Battle of Anghiari in the Palazzo Vecchio. Over fifty years later, Giorgio Vasari was hired to remodel the room where da Vinci’s mural was located. In the process, da Vinci’s mural vanished into thin air. New evidence suggests that not only does it still exist but that it…
Back in 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, taking over 1,500 lives in the process. But how did this happen? Did an Optical Illusion sink the Titanic? Recently, we wrote about how lunar tides may have caused the iceberg to end up in the Titanic’s…
On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, taking 1,517 people to a watery grave. But how did it happen? Did Lunar Tides Sink the Titanic? The fate of the Titanic is well known. In 1912, it crashed into an iceberg and sank sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. Over 1,500 people…
It looks like ancient Celtic warriors traveled miles past Europe’s boundaries…thousands of miles in fact…all the way to China’s mysterious Taklamakan Desert. Did Ancient Celtic Warriors go to China? The ancient Celts were a group of tribal societies that existed during the Iron Age and Medieval Europe. At its peak, the Celtic tribes encompassed a…
More than anyone else, Christopher Columbus is responsible for connecting the Old World to the New World. But he wasn’t the first person to reach America. So, who discovered America? Who Discovered America? I’ve long favored the idea that pre-Columbian contact between the “Old World” and “New World” was far more extensive than the history…
Were the Neanderthals land-locked? Or did they master the seas as ancient mariners? Neanderthals: Were they Ancient Mariners? Recently, researchers discovered Neanderthal-type tools in Greece as well as on several Greek islands. Although they have yet to be dated, they provide some intriguing evidence that Neanderthals crossed the Mediterranean Sea 100,000 years ago. It’s possible…
In 1820, the U.S. whaling industry was just a blip, generating about $1 million in revenue per year. Thirty years later, it had grown nearly 1,000%, making the U.S. the global leader in whaling. By 1900, U.S. whaling revenues had declined an astonishing 90%. What happened? The Mysterious Decline of the U.S. Whaling Industry? The rise…