History

A preserved tree fossil gives an unprecedented view into a moment 42,000 years ago when the Earth’s magnetic field went haywire, triggering environmental chaos, influencing everything from an increase in cave paintings to the Neanderthal extinction.

Some historic aircraft seem like a barrel for holding superlatives. One of these, the H-4 Hercules, goes one better because it's also at the center of one of the strangest stories involving possibly the 20th century's strangest man – Howard Hughes.

Any sort of list is fraught with subjectivity, and perhaps none more so than one ranking the world's greatest technological achievements in order from 100 to one. This week, two tech experts bravely took on this historic task – and it's a wild ride.

Scientists have charted how dinosaurs rose to prominence using a pretty unconventional method. They studied, in dirty detail, hundreds of samples of fossilized poop and vomit.

Some of the most important landmarks in world history sold at Christie's New York auction of the Paul G Allen Collection today, many of them smashing auction records, while some lots inexplicably sold well below existing market value.

Most of us associate Honda with the color red. The multinational is even known as Big Red in some parts of the world. Have you ever wondered how that came to be? The answer is both obvious and convoluted.

The computer mouse changed the world. Apple & Microsoft pioneered the mouse to global adoption. Now one of the very first batch is going to auction ...

New insights into a mummy frozen in time with mouth agape, which has disturbed and fascinated archeologists for decades, have revealed that her animated expression was not due to bad embalming but more likely caused by dying in immense, emotional pain.

Well-preserved bones of a two-tonne glyptodont revealed cut marks indicative of stone tools, suggesting that human hunter-gatherers had settled in the Americas around 21,000 years ago – some 5,000 years before people were thought to have arrived.

The first expedition to the Titanic since last year's Titan submersible disaster that killed five people is on its way. The goal is to make the most detailed imaging survey yet of the historic wreck to ascertain how the sea environment is affecting it.

A new study of ancient detrital zircons from inland Australia has found the first evidence that the Earth has had fresh water and dry land four billion years ago, much longer than previously thought. In fact, 500 million years further back in time.

The Q1 desktop microcomputer, the world's first microcomputer that was uncovered in storage boxes by accident by cleaners at Kingston University in London, is going on the auction block at Heritage Auctions, along with a later version and a printer.