All posts tagged: history

Police Investigate Suspected Arson at Boston Museum of African American History

Police Investigate Suspected Arson at Boston Museum of African American History

Police and federal authorities are investigating a suspected act of arson at the Museum of African American History in Boston after a package containing materials for an upcoming Juneteenth celebration was set on fire outside the institution this week. According to Boston police, the incident occurred around 8 a.m. on Wednesday at the museum’s African Meeting House site on Beacon Hill. Security footage reportedly shows a man opening a package, scattering some of its contents, and setting several items on fire in an alley behind the historic building. Related Articles The package contained materials intended for the museum’s upcoming Juneteenth celebration, according to museum president and CEO Noelle Trent. Boston police said they are investigating the incident alongside the National Park Service and are working with civil rights groups to identify any possible bias motive. Authorities have not classified the incident as a hate crime, though Trent said the circumstances were troubling given the location and the nature of the materials that were targeted. “For us, this feels like a hate crime … the proximity …

13 incredible photos of America’s 1976 bicentennial celebration

13 incredible photos of America’s 1976 bicentennial celebration

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Every year, July Fourth rolls along with a bang, literally. According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, the country spent about $400 million on Fourth of July fireworks displays in 2022. Meanwhile, everyday consumers spent about $2.3 billion on fireworks. That’s a lot of fireworks. And, in 2026, that figure is likely to soar even higher since this year (as you’ve undoubtedly heard) is the United States’s 250th birthday celebration. Let’s hear it for the semiquincentennial! The last big birthday the U.S. had was in 1976 for the country’s 200th. While this year is sure to look a lot different, here are some images of the fireworks, festivals, and fumbles of the United States of America’s 1976 bicentennial celebration almost 50 years ago. To …

Scotland’s ancient human-made islands are dripping with secrets

Scotland’s ancient human-made islands are dripping with secrets

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Mysterious and ancient human-made islands of timber and stone have endured amidst Scotland’s more well-known standing stones, Roman forts, and 18th century battlefields. Called crannogs, archeologists were initially not so sure what purpose these islands served, but were relatively confident that most of them date back to between the Iron Age (800 BCE to 400 CE) and the post medieval period (1550 to 1800). That is, until local diver Chris Murray found pottery fragments that were much older than they should have been. Murray discovered the pottery remains from a crannog in the Isle of Lewis, part of the Outer Hebrides island chain on the country’s northwestern coast. Experts at the National Museum at Edinburgh were bewildered to discover that they were Neolithic …

AI feature film on Iran’s protest movement makes festival history – arts24

AI feature film on Iran’s protest movement makes festival history – arts24

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Accept Manage my choices One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again ARTS24 © FRANCE 24 Issued on: 05/06/2026 – 14:25Modified: 05/06/2026 – 14:26 12:38 min From the show Reading time 1 min A film about Iran’s protest movement is making cinema history. “Dreams of Violets” is the first fully AI-generated feature film ever selected by a major international film festival. The 75-minute drama will premiere at New York’s Tribeca Festival next week. Created by Iranian-British director Ash Koosha from his home in London, the film took just three months to produce and cost less than 2,000 euros. There were no actors, no cameras, no sets and no film crew. Koosha says the film simply could not have been made through conventional means. Living in exile and unable to safely film inside Iran, he turned to AI to recreate events …

Humans really did move Stonehenge’s six-ton centerpiece

Humans really did move Stonehenge’s six-ton centerpiece

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Stonehenge is so much more than just a monumental feat of ancient engineering—it’s also a logistical marvel. Multiple generations of Neolithic designers relied on communal teamwork and clever construction techniques to precisely place each of the site’s gigantic megaliths about 5,000 years ago. Two primary types of stone known as sarcens and bluestones make up the formation. Paleoarchaeologists previously traced most of the sarcens to about 15 miles away to present-day Marlborough, England, while many of the bluestones originated in Wales. The famed Altar Stone is far more perplexing, however. The central, six-ton sandstone megalith likely came from a region in Scotland about 400 miles away. How a prehistoric society managed to scoot the boulder so far without complex tools or transportation methods …

Archaeologists find ancient matrilineal society in Turkiye’s Catalhoyuk | History

Archaeologists find ancient matrilineal society in Turkiye’s Catalhoyuk | History

Catalhoyuk, Turkiye – About an hour southeast of Konya lies one of the most exciting Neolithic finds of the 20th century – the densely populated settlement of Catalhoyuk. Occupied for 1,000 years from about 7000 to 6000 BC, Catalhoyuk has drawn archaeologists since its discovery in 1958 as they have tried to piece together how its society worked. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list A recent genomics study published in the journal Science revealed that Catalhoyuk’s gender dynamics made it unique among European Neolithic settlements. The discovery centres around matrilocality, the fact that women remained in their homes while males were more likely to move away when they reached adulthood. The study’s 46 authors “estimated that 70 to 100% of the time, female offspring remained connected to buildings”, in contrast to other European Neolithic communities, which were patrilineal and patrilocal. The settlement Catalhoyuk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is possibly the world’s first city with clusters of buildings, agricultural production, rituals and even ornamentation. Today, its remains are in two large tells, or …

The Surprising, Liberating History of Marriage

The Surprising, Liberating History of Marriage

A few months ago, one of my best friends told me that she and her boyfriend had gotten engaged. Engaged? I thought. What for? She has two young kids and has never been married; he’s older; they each have their own apartment; she seemed happy with the way things were. “Congratulations!” I said, because he’s a good person, and I love my friend. Then I asked where they were going to live, and she laughed in my face. “Oh, we’re not moving in together,” she said. She’d assumed I would have known that. They might do it someday, sure. But for now they can afford to keep paying for two homes, and she’s prioritizing the children’s stability, and everyone’s space and sanity. Explore the July 2026 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More In a way, I was as surprised by my surprise as my friend was. It’s not as if my life is normal. Recently I picked my kids up at their father’s place and …

Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

PARIS (AP) — Wilting in the summer sun, a line of tourists waits to climb Notre Dame cathedral and meet its gargoyles. Four meters (13 feet) beneath them, a team of archaeologists is digging the other way — straight down and back in time, to Roman Paris 2,000 years ago. In 2019, fire brought Notre Dame’s spire crashing down as the world watched. The cathedral was rebuilt and reopened in late 2024, and now Paris wants to soften the hot, bare square in front of it with trees and shade. But in a city this old, the soil cannot be turned until what lies beneath it is excavated, in case it is damaged during works. So a slice of Notre Dame’s forecourt has become an excavation site — an open pit ringed by barriers and crossed by a wooden walkway, a few steps from the line-up. A modern Da Vinci Code French media have dubbed it the “dig of the century.” “It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to …

A year before the French election, De Gaulle remains politically fashionable

A year before the French election, De Gaulle remains politically fashionable

‘De Gaulle: Resistance’, is released in cinemas in France on June 3, the first part of a two-parter on Charles de Gaulle, the French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany and Vichy France. The much anticipated films took director Antonin Baudry and his team six years to make, with a budget of nearly 80 million euros. But even beyond the silver screen, with a year to go until the presidential elections, De Gaulle has perhaps never been so politically fashionable. Keywords for this article Source link