The Search for El Dorado
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Was the Search for El Dorado? The search for El Dorado was the four-century European pursuit of a treasure that did not exist in the form European explorers were looking for. The phrase began as a nickname, el dorado meaning “the […]
Area 51 and Alien Technology
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 6, 2026. A dry lakebed in southern Nevada has carried more legend per square mile than almost any patch of American ground. Locals knew it as Groom Lake. Workers nicknamed it the Ranch. The CIA wrote it into memos […]
The Walls of Sacsayhuamán
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Are the Sacsayhuamán Walls? The Sacsayhuamán walls are three tiered terraces of cyclopean polygonal masonry on a hill above Cusco, Peru, built by Inca masons in the fifteenth century. The largest blocks weigh more than one hundred tonnes. They were quarried, […]
The Great Sphinx of Giza
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 The Great Sphinx of Giza is, by overwhelming Egyptological consensus, an Old Kingdom royal monument carved from the limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau as part of the pyramid complex of the pharaoh Khafre, around 2500 BCE. That sentence does most of […]
The Isthmian Script of Ancient Mesoamerica
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 6, 2026. In 1902, a farmer named Pedro Mimendi was breaking ground in a tobacco field in the Tuxtla foothills of Veracruz when his plow turned up a hand-sized lump of jadeite shaped like a shaman with a duck’s […]
The Lost Franklin Expedition
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Was the Lost Franklin Expedition? The Lost Franklin Expedition was a British naval voyage that left England in May 1845 under Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) to chart the final unmapped link of the Northwest Passage. Two reinforced ships, HMS Erebus and […]
The Baigong Pipes: Natural or Manufactured?
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Are the Baigong Pipes? The Baigong Pipes are a cluster of rust-coloured tubular formations in the slopes and caves of Mount Baigong, about forty kilometres southwest of Delingha in the Qaidam Basin, Qinghai Province, China. Reported by the Chinese writer Bai […]
The Imperial Regalia of Japan
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Are the Imperial Regalia of Japan? The Imperial Regalia of Japan, known in Japanese as Sanshu no Jingi, are three sacred objects: the sword Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the mirror Yata no Kagami, and the jewel Yasakani no Magatama. They are first attested in […]
The Journeys of Alexander the Great
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Were the Journeys of Alexander the Great? The journeys of Alexander the Great were a single continuous campaign of roughly twelve years, running from his crossing of the Hellespont in spring 334 BC to his death in Babylon on 10 or […]
The Death of Marilyn Monroe
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 6, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 6, 2026. What Happened to Marilyn Monroe on the Night of August 4, 1962? Marilyn Monroe died at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, on the night of August 4, 1962, of acute barbiturate poisoning. The Los […]