Historical Events

Poison pros turned to arsenic throughout the ages, until one man totally killed the all the fun.

By Laurie L. Dove

Join Holly Frey of Stuff You Missed in History Class as she explores the impact of presidential assassinations with Bryan Young, author of "A Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination."

In 2008, a team of researchers combed through old books, papyruses and stone tablets to find the oldest joke in the world. Does it stand the test of time?

By Debra Ronca

The '80s were a strange decade. Despite the lingering threat of nuclear annihilation, Americans still found time to fear nonexistent cult movements intent on sacrificing children. Venture into the world of satanic panic.

By Robert Lamb

The love affair with amusement parks began in Coney Island, New York. In 1884, thousands of people flocked here to ride on La Marcus A. Thompson's Switchback Gravity Pleasure Railway. This Pleasure Railway offered the chance to speed along its 450-foot track at 6 mph. By 1927, the Coney Island Cyclone, which travelled at 60 [...] The post The Craziest Amusement Park Accidents That Resulted In Death appeared first on Goliath.

By Kevin Saltarelli

Health panics are often caused by misinformation in the media. Learn more about 5 health panics caused by misinformation in this video from HowStuffWorks.

The word "massacre" conjures up images of the senseless slaughter of thousands. But some, while still tragic, claimed only a few lives. Here are five with huge historical impacts.

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

Accidents happen, they say, but some actually make the world a better place. Where would we be without the accidental discoveries of beer, penicillin or Popsicles?

By Dave Roos

What do George Washington's false teeth, a 42-ton steel sculpture and the crew of Flight 19 have in common? They all mysteriously vanished.

By Patrick J. Kiger

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom ensured the passage of the Civil Rights Act and made Martin Luther King Jr. an American hero. But its success was not assured at the beginning.

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

Everyone makes mistakes, but some lapses in judgment are spectacularly bad. What are some of history's most epic miscalculations?

By Maria Trimarchi

On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg, the largest airship ever built, crashed and burned in Lakehurst, N.J. Thirty-six people were killed, including one person on the ground.

By Tracy V. Wilson

The concept of revenge predates legal history; you could even say that it's part of who we are as humans. But sometimes the need for vengeance can kick into overdrive - as in these 12 infamous acts of revenge.

By Josh Clark, Alia Hoyt & Patrick J. Kiger

The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment turned to action when the U.S. broke from King George III and British rule. How did 18th century intellectual ideals incite revolution?

By Jessika Toothman

Whether it's the topic of a holiday greeting card or a beauty pageant question, peace on Earth is on almost everybody's wish list. But has the world ever been truly peaceful?

By Meghan E. Smith

The United States economy crumbles and rebuilds itself with astonishing regularity, falling from periods of economic success into panic. What are five of the worst financial panics in history, and what can they teach us about our current recession?

By Jessika Toothman

The Revolutionary War involved bloody battles and courageous heroes, and led to the foundation of the U.S. Explore the historical moments of this nation-building rebellion.

June 6, 2022, marks the 78th anniversary of what some call one of the gutsiest battles in WWII history: D-Day, aka the Invasion of Normandy.

By Jane McGrath & Sarah Gleim

The year 2008 in pictures includes everything from newsmakers like Robert Mugabe and Michael Phelps to events like the Myanmar cyclone. See 2008 in pictures.

If you haven't been keeping news clippings for your 2008 scrapbook, you might've forgotten what happened earlier this year. That's where HowStuffWorks comes in. Here are 10 headlines from 2008 that'll go down in history.

By HowStuffWorks.com Contributors

There's more to Beijing than meets the eye at street-level. Under bustling sidewalks is a subterranean city with its own classrooms, movie theater and restaurants.

By Josh Clark

Much of the ice has melted, and the woolly mammoths are long gone. But could we still be in an ice age and headed for another?

By Molly Edmonds

The Berlin Wall splintered a city and divided a country, but it may also have prevented nuclear war. Why block off a city with concrete, barbed wire and land mines?

By Ed Grabianowski

Continents aren't the unchanging, universally recognized land masses of our school studies. But they do help us make sense of our world. How did they get their names?

By Julia Layton

How does change happen? For the civil rights movement, it began with a group of people who decided that separate but equal wasn't good enough.

By John Fuller & Kathryn Whitbourne