The Great Sphinx of Giza stands on a limestone plateau where deep, wavy grooves run down its walls and its edges are rounded smooth, like stone that has been worn by water rather than by wind or sand. For decades, Egyptologists dated the monument to about 2500 BCE, the reign of the pharaoh Khafre, and … Read more

The moment the digital scan reached 800% magnification, Dr. Sarah Mitchell stopped breathing. For fifteen years she had examined historical photographs, thousands of them, and she had never seen anything like this. The child in the image, a girl of about eight in a pristine white dress, still wore that wide and genuine smile. But … Read more

At first, it looked like a photograph of two sisters. Then the archivist noticed their hands. The archive room of the Baltimore Historical Society was unusually quiet on that Tuesday morning in March. Dr. Rebecca Thompson sat at her desk, surrounded by boxes of photographs donated by the estate of a prominent Baltimore family. The … Read more

The results came back in a laboratory in 2004, and they pointed in a direction no one had expected. A team at DNA Consultants had been working with genetic material preserved since 1977, the year Elvis Presley died. Under strict laboratory protocols, they had extracted and amplified the Y-DNA marker, the genetic signature passed unchanged … Read more

The dust of the Thornton Studio collection had barely settled on the archive tables when Thomas Rivera found the photograph that would consume the next six months of his life. For fifteen years, he had cataloged the photographic history of Baltimore for the Maryland Historical Society, handling thousands of glass plates and faded prints that … Read more

In May 1570, Anna of Austria, just twenty years old, married King Philip II of Spain by proxy in Vienna. The match shocked Europe. The Pope himself tried to prevent it. The scandal was not simply the twenty-three-year gap between bride and groom. Philip was her uncle. The marriage bound the Austrian and Spanish branches … Read more

If your family name is Romano, Russo, or Colombo, stop scrolling. Your family’s story did not begin with your grandparents. It began in ancient Rome more than two thousand years ago. Most people think of their surname as just a name. In Italy, surnames carry a history that most families never learn. Some come directly … Read more

The news came with a brevity that made it worse. A statement from Buckingham Palace announced that Thomas Kingston, the beloved husband of Lady Gabriella Windsor, had died suddenly. He was forty-five years old. There was no cause given, only a request for privacy and an acknowledgment of the great shock felt by the whole … Read more

In 1988, Ivana Trump stood at the top of New York society, running the Plaza Hotel with her name on the letterhead, married to the most famous name in American real estate. From the outside, it looked like the fairy tale had worked. But to understand how a girl from a communist backwater ended up … Read more