Kids News - History Articles

In mid-January, while exploring the white sands of the beach-side dunes just north of Western Australia’s Wedge Island, Tonya Illman came across an “interesting” bottle. Little did she know that inside the glass container lay an invaluable treasure — a 131-year-old note, the oldest message in a bottle discovered to date!...

Burying time capsules for future civilizations is not a new concept. However, the one hidden underground near the Polish Polar Station in Hornsund, Spitsbergen, in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, is a little unique. Instead of detailed documents to showcase our progress and knowledge, the capsule contains objects, which the creators believe will be easier for future historians to interpret....

Columbus Day has been a fixture on American calendars since 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared October 12 a federal holiday to honor the Italian explorer who “discovered” the Americas in 1492. However, the holiday, whose date has since been changed to the second Monday of October, has always been somewhat controversial. Many people believe that Christopher Columbus should not be given credit for “discovering” the continent, since Native Americans had already been residing there for generations....

American historian Laurel Ulrich once said, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” In celebration of Women’s History Month, here are a few of the millions of brave women that have broken all conventional rules to make a difference in the world....

When the international team of sailors and researchers led by Professor Jon Adams from the University of Southampton established the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project, their primary goal was to map the sea floor and study the prehistoric landscapes flooded during the last Ice Age. So you can only imagine their delight, when they stumbled upon an unexpected treasure trove of perfectly preserved shipwrecks, many of which are known from historical sources, but have never been seen before....

Researchers had long known that Aboriginal Australians once used boomerangs for hunting and digging. Now, a new study suggests that the natives created ‘killer’ versions of the iconic Australian souvenirs to fight internal battles as well....

While ancient scrolls hold many secrets, opening the delicate manuscripts is always a tricky endeavor. The situation becomes even worse when they are charred as was the case with the Ein Gedi scroll discovered by archeologists at the site of an ancient synagogue in Israel in the 1970’s. The animal skin document that resembled a lump of coal was extremely fragile, and therefore, never opened. However, the curators of the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) preserved it in the hopes that some day, advances in technology would allow them to read what lay inside. Now thanks to a team led by University of Kentucky professor Brian Seales, that has become a reality....

On August 3rd, 1492 Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain, to seek out a western sea route to China and India. However, the explorer and his crew never made it to the gold and spice islands of Asia. Instead, about two months later, on October 12th, they landed on a small island in the modern-day Bahamas that Columbus claimed for Spain and named San Salvador....

Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire, England, is one of the world's most well-known ancient religious and burial sites. Situated amidst a dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, the modest looking circle of stones that are visited by millions of tourists annually were declared a World Heritage Site in 1986. Now it appears that the ancient tombstones that are believed to date all the way back to 2,000 B.C. have some bigger competitors right in their own backyard....