As a public historian and National Geographic Explorer, I’m constantly on the trail of interesting stories that connect a series of events dating back several centuries but continue to resonate into modern times. On a recent road trip through the American South, my partner, National Geographic photographer Kris Graves, and I drove through Tuskegee, Alabama, where we found a connection to time long before human beings walked the Earth. It’s a story of how the geology of the Cretaceous Period, between 70 and 100 Million years ago, emphatically changed the...

For the first time in decades, archaeologists have stepped inside the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh—to be greeted by hallmark hieroglyphs on the walls and traces of a faded celestial mural on the ceiling painted thousands of years ago. Last week, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that a joint British and Egyptian archaeological team had uncovered the new find, which could change modern understandings of the ancient kingdom at a critical time in the 15th century B.C. It also highlights how Egyptology has changed from its origins...

In the hit Apple TV series Severance, the microchip-bearing employees of Lumon Industries traverse the eerie halls of a massive office building that serves as a kind of corporate hell. The hallways are sterile and seemingly infinite—and the departments spread so far apart that employees need maps to find each other. But that imposing building isn’t a Hollywood soundstage: It’s filmed at the real-life Bell Laboratories complex in Holmdel, New Jersey, one of the last works by famed architect Eero Saarinen. Bell Labs is iconic as both an homage to...

During the era known as the Third Intermediate Period (ca 1075–715 B.C.), Egypt’s government was in the throes of political chaos and decline. Nubia was left fairly free of pharaonic intervention, and several new, independent Kushite kingdoms flourished. In one of these, near the Fourth Cataract, a dynasty of rulers emerged in the mid-eighth century B.C., this time establishing the kingdom’s capital at Napata and a necropolis at nearby El Kurru. The rulers of this Kushite kingdom would eventually govern those who had once controlled them, even becoming pharaohs of...

The middle-aged seamstress was an unlikely civil rights hero. But when Rosa Parks refused to give up a seat on a segregated bus in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, she became a titan in the struggle for racial equality. Parks’ modest looks and quiet demeanor belied her true identity: that of a fierce, disciplined, and committed civil rights activist. A force to be reckoned with, Parks contributed to the movement long before—and long after—her act of protest on that bus. Here’s what to know about the woman whose simple act of...

Walk through the streets of the United Kingdom, and you’ll see Queen Victoria’s name everywhere, from rail stations to parks, pubs, and a line on the London Underground. The reason? Between 1837 and 1901, Victoria reigned over a rapidly changing world—one that saw the rise of trains, telegraphs, and electric light. But she wasn’t just a ruler. She was a cultural force. Victoria was what historian John Plunkett has called the “first media monarch,” one who was squarely in the public eye thanks to an expanding media culture. Images of...

Crammed with exquisite objects, a 2,200-year-old tomb is revealing fresh insights into a period of upheaval and cultural flourishing that forged modern China. The site of Wuwang­dun lies near the city of Huainan in eastern China. The site was a few miles from the last capital of the Chu state, which by 260 B.C. occupied a swath of southeastern China, with the Yangtze River at its heart. Archaeologists working on the site of Wuwangdun, a cemetery complex in eastern China’s Anhui Province, have not made any statements on the tomb’s...

A tense frontier. A brutal mass killing. Netflix’s newest hit miniseries, American Primeval, portrays life and grisly death in 1850s Utah—a gritty look at the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a sordid act of mass violence that led to 120 deaths on the western frontier in 1857. The show’s portrayal of the massacre is hair-raising—but the reality was even worse. The culmination of a decade of tension and mutual suspicion between Mormon pioneers and the United States government, the Mountain Meadows Massacre took place during the Utah War—a conflict some refer to...

Between 1892 and 1954, most immigrants arriving in the United States passed through New York’s Ellis Island control center. For those fleeing poverty and war, the “island of tears” was also an island of hope—and the beginning of a new life. Looking toward Manhattan, this 1930s photograph of Ellis Island shows the copper-domed towers of the main building, built in 1900 after the previous structure burned down. The ferry slip can be seen cutting into the island from the right. On the near side of the ferry slip is the...