While experts known that this distilled spirit dates to the Shang Dynasty period in the late second millennium B.C.E. and that it was likely made from fruit or rice, little is certain about how it was created.

A primordial deity in Greek and Roman mythology, Nyx helped shape the early universe — and commanded respect even among the mightiest gods.

Researchers at Milan's Sforza Castle used ground-penetrating radar to map the area and discover secret passageways once described by Leonardo da Vinci.

While Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as one of America's most impactful civil rights leaders, his father was also an activist who headed the NAACP in Atlanta and led marches in the city.

These footprints were made more than 1,000 years before Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 C.E.

From communal wiping sponges to vermin-infested sewers, learning about ancient Roman bathrooms will make you glad that you live in modern times.

Wild Bill Hickok died on August 2, 1876, in Deadwood, South Dakota, after he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall.

Scientists named the new species Bathynomus vaderi because of its resemblance to Darth Vader.

A 2,000-year-old necropolis found beneath a former hospital in Orléans, France, held more than 60 graves and 21 "curse tablets," including one written in the extinct Celtic language of Gaulish.

Dozens of whitebark pine trees were covered by the ice patch for over 5,000 years, and now warming temperatures have revealed them once again.

The only daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Cleopatra Selene II was taken prisoner by the Romans after her parents' suicides — but her story didn't end there.

Scientists just determined that the skull found in an elaborate tomb in Ephesus in 1929 didn't actually belong to Cleopatra's half-sister Arsinoë IV but rather to an 11- to 14-year-old boy with a possible developmental disorder.