Planck Quantizes Energy: Birth of Quantum Physics

A massive earthquake shattered Constantinople on this day in 557, tearing deep fissures into the city’s infrastructure and collapsing the original dome of the H…

The ground split open beneath the Hagia Sophia. Constantinople's newest marvel—completed just 20 years earlier—swayed but held. The rest of the city wasn't so l…

Emperor Wenzong hid soldiers behind palace curtains, planted them in trees, stationed them everywhere. The signal: dew on a pomegranate tree he'd show the eunuc…

Pope John VIII stepped into a papacy under siege. Vikings raided Rome's outskirts. Muslim fleets controlled the Mediterranean. The Holy Roman Empire was fragmen…

The Zuiderzee sea wall collapsed during a massive storm surge, drowning over 50,000 people across the Netherlands and northern Germany. This disaster permanentl…

She was six days old. Her father, James V, had just died—some say of grief after Scotland's humiliating defeat at Solway Moss, others of cholera or dysentery. E…