Mendel’s monastery garden experiments went largely unnoticed during his life, but their implications would ripple through science decades later. Gregor Mendel, Austrian botanist and founder of genetics, poses for a photograph circa 1860. Between 1856-1863, Mendel bred almost 30,000 pea plants in his monastery garden which demonstrated that hereditary characteristicsContinue Reading
If November’s widespread aurora sightings left you buzzing, December is poised to keep the momentum going. This month’s nightscapes are packed with celestial standouts: early planet sightings, a bright supermoon, and what many astronomers consider 2025’s best meteor shower. Later in the month, an exceptionally vivid Jupiter will cap offContinue Reading
When the sinking of the White Ship decimated England’s line of succession and threw the kingdom into chaos in 1120, one teenage girl was the only heir to the British throne left standing. Even with the—at first reluctant—endorsement of her father King Henry I, 25-year-old Matilda couldn’t achieve that historical first: ruling asContinue Reading
It took well over a century for archaeologists to start taking ancient tattoos seriously, with old colonialist attitudes and more contemporary stigmas steering scholars away. What’s more, ancient tattoos can be difficult to study: Tattooing tools are tricky to identify in the archaeological record, and only rarely is ink wellContinue Reading
In the early winter months of 1897, a woman named Mary J. Heaster found herself in regular prayer. Her daughter, Elva Zona Heaster Shue, had just died that January. Only recently married, Zona (as she was known) was a young woman, and her “death by heart disease”—as the county coronerContinue Reading
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