Researchers and archivists from University of California are asking for help in transcribing field notes and identifying insect specimens dating back over 100 years. Among the collection is a Tierra del Fuego beetle discovered in 1833 by Charles Darwin. Volunteers can look at the specimens and submit their transcriptions online using the Berkeley university’s Calbug system….    

Archivists in California have unearthed vials of moon dust collected from the Apollo 11 mission, hidden within a warehouse at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Each of the 20 vials have handwritten labels on, dated 24 July 1970, and were found inside a vacuum-sealed glass jar on the lab’s campus. Along with the jar was a copy of the paper [...]

  From the Popular Science archive: Weather control, looped cities, moon microwaves, and more!    HERE

By Wesley Fenlon Every discussion of a manned mission to Mars inevitably touches on the practicality of a one-way, no-comin’-back trip. Sending a lone astronaut, or a small team, on a trip to a planet roughly 50 million miles away (when the orbits of Earth and Mars are relatively aligned) becomes much more viable when you don’t have the carry [...]

A remarkable set of family pictures showing the doomed Russian royal family’s private moments has been has been found in the vaults of a remote Urals museum. The photographs show the royals in the months and years before Nicholas II was forced to abdicate as the toll of the First World War and the storm clouds of revolution overwhelmed the [...]

Next time your cat sidles up to you for an afternoon nap, it may actually be trying to steal your secrets – that is at least what the CIA in the 1960s was hoping felines would do after being turned into four-legged spies. As part of a clandestine experiment appropriately dubbed Operation Acoustic Kitty, a veterinary surgeon implanted a microchip [...]

Confederate Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was shot by friendly fire during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Now astronomers say they know why his own troops couldn’t recognize him: The full moon was shining right into their faces, putting the Confederate commander in stark silhouette. [Full story]… PHOTOS     Image credit: From the collection of Donald Olson

These extraordinary photographs provide a unique on-the-ground view of the immediate aftermath of the 1944 D-Day invasion. The campaign heralded the beginning of the end of the Second World War, as 160,000 Allied soldiers landed on the beaches of France to liberate it from the occupying Nazi forces. The iconic operation – the largest sea invasion in history – has [...]

World War II saw many women pitched into tough professions, but Molly Lefebure was the only young female working in the morgues of London. Now 93 and living in a nursing home in Winchester, Hampshire, she has written a memoir recalling some of her most tantalising cases. The young man I was supposed to be going out with that night [...]

The man who assassinated Dr Martin Luther King Jr has been seen for the first time on footage newly restored 45 years after the civil rights leader’s death.  The fascinating, historical clips from July 1968 show James Earl Ray in handcuffs sitting on an airplane in Tennessee after being extradited from London. He had fled the U.S. following the fatal [...]