Rickets in Medici Children

Examination of recently discovered skeletons of nine Medici children ranging from newborn to five years old born in the sixteenth century reveals they suffered from rickets, a disease caused by Vitamin D deficiency and commonly associated with poverty and malnutrition but most likely brought about by the privileged family living most of their lives indoors.

Cannibalism at Jamestown

New analysis of the bones of a 14-year-old girl show the first direct archaeological evidence of cannibalism by the early American colonists at the Jamestown settlement in Virginia during the harsh winter "starving time" of 1609-1610.

Ancient Chinese Coin in Africa

An expedition has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese "Yongle Tongbao" coin on the Kenyan coastal island of Manda dating from Emperor Yongle's reign from 1403 to 1425 A.D., providing evidence of overseas trade between China and East Africa decades before European exploration began.

Timbuktu's Science Manuscripts

Retreating Islamist rebels fleeing from advancing Malian troops set fire to the Ahmed Baba Institute and a related warehouse in Timbuktu, a repository of an estimated 30,000 scientific manuscripts dating back to medieval times written by African scholars on subjects of astronomy, medicine, botany, mathematics and biology.

Blood of King Louis XVI

Scientists have matched DNA from dried blood on a handkerchief stored in a gourd decorated with scenes of the French Revolution with tissue from the mummified head of the French King Henry IV, proving the blood to be from Louis XVI executed in 1793 and the first historical genome ever retrieved.

Drought Reveals Warsaw Treasure

A drought affecting Poland's Vistula River, at its lowest level since records began in the 18th century, have revealed 12 tons of 17th-century marble pieces looted from Kazimierz Palace during the Swedish Deluge and sinking to the river bottom with the barge that carried them away some 350 years ago.

Historical Ethiopian Genomes

Researchers studying the genome of Ethiopian populations have discovered an unexpected diversity and similarity to those of populations from Syria and Israel, potentially a genetic heritage reflecting the arrival of the Queen of Sheba mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur'an.

Remnants of War in Beach Sand

Geologists have discovered small shrapnel grains, rounded iron beads and fragments of glass in the sand of Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, remnants of the D-Day invasion of World War II only now revealed under a scanning electron microscope.

WWII Fighter Found in Sahara

An oil-exploration team has discovered a Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk British fighter plane that crashed in the Sahara some 70 years ago and, despite desert weathering and some vandalism, is the best-preserved example of a World War II aircraft seen in many decades.

Titanic Sunk by "Supermoon"

A new theory has surfaced regarding the sinking of the RMS Titanic that proposes an extremely rare alignment of the Sun, Earth and full moon on January 4, 1912, may have caused unusually strong tides and allowed much larger than average icebergs into the commercial shipping lanes in the following months.

"Lost" Darwin Fossils

British scientists have found dozens of "lost" fossil samples originally collected and tagged by Charles Darwin and his scientific contemporaries more than 165 years ago, stored away in an old wooden cabinet in a corner of the British Geological Survey headquarters in London.

Viking Navigational "Sunstones"

Researchers investigating Icelandic spar recovered from Viking shipwrecks have found the crystal separates polarized from unpolarized light, and these crystals may be the historical "sunstones" used to navigate even on cloudy days by locating the position of the hidden sun.

de Soto Reached Interior U.S.

Glass beads and other jewelry found at a site in Georgia have historians redrawing the route of conquistador Hernando de Soto's 16th-century expedition, reaching further into what is now the United States' interior than previously believed.

Europe's Little Ice Age

A new analysis of data has provided a scientific cause-and-effect link for the first time between climate change and large-scale historical crises, showing agriculturally based food shortages and health problems in European nations coinciding with the harshest years of the "Little Ice Age" from 1560 to 1660.

Renaissance Halo Diagram

Believed destroyed in World War II, a document by Jesuit scholar Christoph Scheiner has been rediscovered that records the "seven suns" optical halo effect that appeared over Rome in 1630, the earliest known documentation of that phenomenon.

Frankenstein's "Shining Moon"

An astronomer's calculations have confirmed Mary Shelley's account of her historical inspiration for writing the gothic horror novel Frankenstein, that of a "bright and shining moon" over Lake Geneva during a "waking dream" in June 1816.

Greater Civil War Losses

Calculations based on recent data sets of census and population data comparing the decades before and after the American Civil War reveal that the number of casualties was greatly underreported, with actual totals ranging from 650,000 to 850,000 instead of the historically accepted 620,000.

Medieval Soldiers in Heavy Armor

A new study shows that European medieval soldiers in heavy armor spent double the energy than a normal soldier simply moving about in their armor, exhausting them even before battles and possibly affecting the outcomes of several historical conflicts.

Historical Climate Change

Recreating the last 1500 years of climate from sediment records, a new study attributes declining temperatures and rising sea-ice as a contributing cause to the collapse of an established Norse Western Settlement in Disko Bay, Greenland, around AD 1350.

Blackbeard's Ship Anchor

The recently discovered 13-foot-long anchor from pirate Edward Teach's ("Blackbeard") ship Queen Anne's Revenge is to be raised for the first time since the ship was sunk off the coast of North Carolina in 1718, the second-largest of more than 250,000 artifacts from the historic site.