History

Researchers have rediscovered a 77-year-old recording of a haunting song that now has been determined to have come from a humpback whale

A Greenland mystery; booming dunes

A Roman stone board game has been unplayable since its discovery more than a century ago, but AI might have just worked out the rules

Scientists have spent decades searching for the final resting place of Luna 9, the first spacecraft to soft-land on the moon. Now they’re on the cusp of finding it

Synchrotron radiation has revealed a star map made by the ancient astronomer Hipparchus that was thought to be lost to time

Treponema pallidum, a microorganism that can cause a deadly sexually transmitted disease in humans, may have a far more ancient lineage than scientists once thought

Giant atoms; corpses for science

Romans living in ancient Britain were plagued by intestinal parasites, all of which are spread by fecal contamination

Disney and OpenAI’s agreement hints at a future in which viewers don’t just choose what to watch but generate it on demand

Killer bees; Mars volcanoes

Christmas trees—and conifers in general—have made some surprising cameos throughout U.S. history, author Trent Preszler reveals in his book Evergreen

Making fire on demand was a milestone in the lives of our early ancestors. But the question of when that skill first arose has been difficult for scientists to pin down