History News and Articles - Archaeological Discoveries

UFOlogist Dr. J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen) ponders a UFO sighting during NATO war games, in the Season 2 finale of "Project Blue Book."

UFO 'invasion' of NATO war games revealed in 'Project Blue Book' season finale

By Mindy Weisberger

UFO sightings during NATO war games in 1952 set the stage for the season finale of "Project Blue Book," the History channel's series about the U.S.' real-life UFO-hunting program.

An influenza ward at a U.S. Army Camp Hospital in France during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history

By Owen Jarus, All About History

Disease outbreaks have ravaged humanity from prehistory to modern times, sometimes changing the course of history and even wiping out entire civilizations.

A drawing (left) and a digital 3D model (right) of a stone slab found at the newly discovered kingdom.

Ancient Maya kingdom with pyramid discovered in southern Mexico

By Grant Currin

The kingdom has the remains of a temple and unique stone carvings.

Sonar scans show the wreck is broken in two parts on the seafloor. This scan shows the submarine's conning tower and bow section.

Explorers find Cold War-era submarine wreck off the coast of Oahu

By Tom Metcalfe

A team of explorers have found the wreck of a United States Navy submarine that sank more than 60 years ago in deep water near the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

Archaeologists found bones belonging to mammoths, reindeer, horses, bears, wolves, red foxes and Arctic foxes at the site.

Ice age 'house' made from bones of more than 60 mammoths mystifies archaeologists

By Laura Geggel

The structure was made from the bones of ice age animals, including mammoths.

Beds with patients in an emergency hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, in the midst of the Spanish flu pandemic.

Spanish flu: The deadliest pandemic in history

By All About History

Over 100 years ago, a killer strain of the influenza virus infected over a third of the world's population.

Archaeologists and volunteers are working to preserve human bones exposed by recent storms in an ancient cemetery above a beach on the Orkney Islands.

Scottish storms unearth 1,500-year-old Viking-era cemetery

By Tom Metcalfe

Powerful storms on Scotland's Orkney Islands exposed ancient human remains in a Pictish and Viking cemetery.

Lindisfarne castle seen from the rugged coast below it.

Lindisfarne: The 'Holy Island' where Vikings spilled the 'blood of saints'

By Owen Jarus

Reference article: Facts about Lindisfarne.

Concealing the saint's remains likely prevented them from being destroyed during the Reformation.

Bones found in a church are earliest verified remains of an English saint

By Mindy Weisberger

Experts recently identified bones found behind a wall in a British church as the remains of a Kentish princess and one of England's first female saints.

A rare first edition of Isaac Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).

Rare first edition of Isaac Newton's groundbreaking book found in Corsica

By Laura Geggel

The book was "hidden in the upper shelves."

The sword was mistakenly thought to be medieval. It is now thought to come from eastern Anatolia and to be about 5000 years-old – one of the oldest swords ever found.

Student discovers 5,000-year-old sword hidden in Venetian monastery

By Tom Metcalfe

A keen-eyed archaeology student made the find of a lifetime when she spotted one of the oldest swords on record, mistakenly grouped with medieval artifacts in a secluded Italian monastery.

A 3D scan of the bunker reveals the close quarters where 7 men would have lived.

Long-lost bunker belonging to 'Churchill's secret army' discovered in Scottish forest

By Brandon Specktor

Forestry workers discovered a lost WWII-era bunker in the woods of Scotland. Experts believe it once housed Britain's most secretive, and suicidal, military force.

20 amazing women in science and math

By Live Science Staff

Some were hailed in their lifetime, others died unrecognized, but all were amazing.

MOLA archaeologists excavate the top of the cesspit, which had been backfilled and covered over with several layers of brick flooring.

Rare tile of mythical beast discovered in 14th-century cesspit

By Laura Geggel

The treasures include a gold-plated ring and a rare medieval tile depicting a mythical creature.

Archaeologists have surveyed the Mayan road with airborne LIDAR technology to reveal the ancient structures along its length.

Maya warrior queen may have built the longest 'white road' in the Yucatán

By Tom Metcalfe

A ruthless Maya warrior queen may have ordered the building of an elaborate road more than 1,000 years ago to invade a distant city and to counter the rising power of another.

The remains of the RMS Titanic are rapidly corroding at the bottom of the North Atlantic. But a proposal to cut the ship’s telegraph machine from the wreck has drawn fierce criticism.

Titanic's iconic telegraph 'voice' may be recovered. But some say the salvager is a 'greedy treasure hunter.'

By Tom Metcalfe

Frantic distress messages were sent over the machine after the cruise liner slammed into an iceberg in 1912.

Archaeologists digitally reconstructed the leopard image from fragments of a sarcophagus cover.

Hello kitty! Leopard face reconstructed from ancient Egyptian sarcophagus

By Mindy Weisberger

Archaeologists have reconstructed part of a colorful leopard painting that decorated the lid of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.

The Gregorian calendar: Why we have Leap years and April Fools' Day

By Robert Coolman

The Gregorian calendar — used by most of the world — was introduced to fix errors in the Julian calendar mostly having to do with leap years.

An illustration of the Roman dagger, sheath and belt.

'Rusty lump' turns out to be 2,000-year-old silver dagger used by Roman soldier

By Laura Geggel

It's rare to find daggers in Roman graves, as these soldiers weren't buried with weapons.

A mushroom cloud rises from the first atomic explosion, detonated on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

What was the Manhattan Project?

By Isobel Whitcomb

Hundreds of thousands of Americans participated in the Manhattan Project. Most of them had no idea.