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A high concentration of the 900 statues are located on the coast of the remote island and researchers have always wondered why they were constructed – until now. Honey Hooper/Wikimedia Commons For centuries, the famous statues that dot the coast of the remote Easter Island in the southeastern Pacific have both fascinated and puzzled archaeologists. Now, a team of archaeologists claims to have answered one of the biggest questions surrounding the mysterious stone figures: why they were built in the first place....

Cristian Petru Panaite was always intrigued by his grandfather’s tattoo. Share Flipboard Email It was a fairly small depiction of a woman and – although his grandfather didn’t like to discuss it – Panaite knew it must have been hard to get in 1950s communist Romania. With this as his only window into the tattooing world, the New York Historical Society’s assistant curator grew up with little understanding of the traditions and culture surrounding the art of getting inked....

A survey asked more than 2,000 Americans about the biggest recent historical events of their lifetimes. It may be the one thing we can agree on. Mario Tama/Getty ImagesA firefighter breaks down after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed September 11, 2001. What are the ten most important historical events that have happened during your lifetime? When the Pew Research Center posed that question to more than 2,000 adults this year, they weren’t surprised to find that answers varied in accordance with respondents’ age, race, and political leanings....

The Sahara was once a grassy woodland until human activity and a changing climate turned it into the immense desert we know today. The Berbers were the only people who decided to call it home. There are some places on Earth that seem like they couldn’t support human life and yet somehow people manage. Like the people indigenous to North Africa who had no choice but to develop ingenious methods of survival: the Berbers....

China has recently done away with its one-child policy. Here’s what that policy was and what the change means for China’s future. A Chinese baby in Xian. Image Source: Flickr/Carol Schaffer China’s 35-year one-child policy is about to come to a close, the state run Xinhua-news agency reported this week. The 1980-enacted policy, which the government claims prevented approximately 400 million births, has met its end as the Chinese state hopes to “improve the balanced development of population” and deal with an aging population, according to a statement released by the Communist Party’s Central Committee....

The battle for Virunga National Park pits rangers against poachers and leaves gorillas in the crossfire. Thankfully, they’re now faring better than ever. TWO GROUPS OF MOUNTAIN GORILLAS WERE SLAUGHTERED in the summer of 2007, one after the other. First, two females were shot, with one’s infant left alive and later found still clinging to its dead mother’s breast. Then came the killing of three females and a silverback, shot, burned, and, in a strange move for poachers, left otherwise intact, no trophies or meat taken for sale on the black market....

A copy of the oldest known coloring book, from 1760, was discovered in the Missouri Botanical Garden’s library. Robert Sayer/Wellcome Images/Wikimedia Commons An 18th-century coloring book was recently found buried the back shelves of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s library, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This coloring book, printed in 1760, predates all other known coloring books by nearly 100 years. The 257-year-old book was published by London printer Robert Sayer and entitled “The Florist....

As these incredible images show, schooling fish are one of the world’s most incredible natural phenomena. Like starling murmurations, schooling fish are one of the world’s most wondrous natural phenomena. Not to be confused with shoaling fish (which refers to fish who gather to swim together socially), schooling fish are defined as a large group of fish that swim synchronously. Swimming in a school allows fish to protect themselves from predators, improve foraging, and swim more efficiently....

From who really built the pyramids to Cleopatra’s favorite prank, these are the most fascinating Ancient Egypt facts you’ll ever read. Servants were sometimes smeared with honey in order to attract flies away from the pharaoh. The bandages of a mummy could stretch out to one mile (1.6 kilometers) when unwrapped. Beer was a primary source of nutrition for most Ancient Egyptians and was consumed daily. Cleopatra’s parents were likely brother and sister and she herself married both of her own brothers at different times....

Journalism is seeing some dark days-which means that a look back on Barbara Walters’ career is even more nostalgic. Source: The Washington Post It’s been a terrible couple of weeks for journalism: Brian Williams’ lies, the death of David Carr and Bob Simon within days of one another. #AdviceForYoungJournalists was trending on Twitter for nearly a week in the wake of these events, with journalists of all stripes putting in their two cents....

They’ve been called drunk and rowdy before. But a new book is now accusing the ‘Wizard of Oz’ Munchkins of something else. Molesting Judy Garland. Reuters: Mario AnzuoniFormer “lollipop guild” munchkin Jerry Maren. In March 2017, publishers posthumously released Sid Luft’s book Judy and I: My Life with Judy Garland, an autobiographical account of life with Judy Garland as told by Luft, who was her former manager, producer, and third husband....

The self-described prophet of the Branch Davidians cult, David Koresh led his followers into the Waco siege that left 76 of them dead in April 1993. David Koresh believed that he was the final prophet of the Branch Davidians religious movement, sent to lead his people on the path of righteousness. He believed it was up to him to bring the word of God to his followers — and he would do it by whatever means necessary, even if it meant leading his people into the Waco siege that pitted his followers against the U....

By some accounts, the self-proclaimed “Angel of Death” killed upwards of 70 people in and out of hospitals across Kentucky and Ohio. Public Domain Donald Harvey’s mugshot from his arrest in 1987. Donald Harvey was an unassuming nurse’s aid in 1987 when he pleaded guilty to killing 37 people. The soft-looking man had been on a decades-long rampage of poisoning hospital patients driven by some God complex. He saw himself as an “Angel of Death” who meted out mercy killings to the terminally ill....

Many in the United States are quick to criticize standardized testing, but a glance at gaokao, China’s college entrance exam, offers some perspective on just how bad standardized testing can actually be. By the time Chinese high school students take gaokao, they have often spent up to half their lives studying for the exam, which was first introduced in 1952 to even the opportunity gap between poor and affluent students in China....

“Every possible clue is being investigated — but so far there are none.” Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/picture alliance via Getty ImagesThe famous wooden penis of Grünten has mysteriously gone missing. For several years, hikers to the Grünten mountaintop in Southern Bavaria had been greeted by an unseemly yet amusing sight: a seven-foot-tall statue of a penis. But now, the famous phallus has suddenly disappeared. According to the Guardian, the phallic wooden sculpture went missing in late November after it had stood on the 5,700-foot-high mountaintop for years....

While the house cat is all but ubiquitous today, the question of how domesticated cats became so prevalent across cultures has riddled researchers for some time. And now, researchers believe they have an answer. According to the groundbreaking new study — presented at the 7th International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Oxford on September 15 and reported in Nature — cats have been with humans for over 10,000 years and took some rather interesting routes in their conquest of the world’s ancient civilizations....

The $75 candle reportedly features “scent notes that include geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed.” Wikimedia Commons/GoopDespite the name, Paltrow’s vagina-scented candle was not designed to smell like her vagina, specifically. In 2008, Oscar-winning movie star Gwyneth Paltrow pivoted to the health and wellness sphere by launching the now-$250 million brand Goop. The posh lifestyle behemoth sells clothing, perfume, and candles that allegedly smell like a vagina — one of which just exploded in a customer’s home....

Cheryl Bradshaw’s Dating Game episode aired in September 1978, but it would be another year before anyone would learn Rodney Alcala was one of America’s worst serial killers. YouTubeCheryl Bradshaw on The Dating Game. Cheryl Bradshaw was thrilled when producers picked her as a contestant for The Dating Game in 1978. The popular television matchmaking show provided national exposure for the drama teacher, and Bradshaw had youth and beauty on her side....

One of the few women in Ancient Greek academe, Hypatia of Alexandria was a true sight to behold. And she was killed because of it. People primarily remember Hypatia of Alexandria, martyr of female intellectuals and tragic heroine, for two things: her philosophical, mathematical, and astronomical teachings and the fact that she was brutally murdered for them. Ancient Greece laid the philosophical foundations for much of Western liberal democracy, but women by and large did not produce its influential “bricks” — that is, save for Hypatia....

Playwright Jonathan Larson died of undiagnosed Marfan syndrome on January 25, 1996 — the very day that Rent was due to make its off-Broadway premiere. Jonathan Larson always wanted to be a performer. He played several instruments from a young age, sang in the choir, and nabbed lead roles in ambitious school productions. Heralded a musical prodigy as a result of writing Rent, he never got to cherish his success — and died the day that musical opened off-Broadway....