The Latest Breaking News from Wikimedia Commons

Even though x is one of the least-used letters in the English alphabet, it appears throughout American culture – from Stan Lee’s X-Men superheroes to “The X-Files” TV series. The letter x often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing – just look at Elon…

Former treasury secretary Larry Summers says downgrade when economy is looking stronger than expected is “bizarre and inept”.

Like many conscientious objectors during the second world war, John Corsellis was acutely aware of the complex and conflicted position he was taking. Years later, he told the Imperial War Museum’s oral history project:

Nearly all life, from bacteria to humans, uses the same genetic code. This code acts as a dictionary, translating genes into the amino acids used to build proteins. The universality of the genetic code indicates a common ancestry among all living organisms and the essential role this code plays in…

I would like to know what a nuclear bomb actually does – Rafael, age 11, Melbourne

On July 19, 1848, nearly 300 men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to begin the United States’ first public political meeting regarding women’s rights. The Seneca Falls Convention resulted in the Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence that asserted “all men…

When it comes to the natural elements, wind’s role in shaping our world can be overlooked. The worship of the sun in ancient cultures such as Egypt is common knowledge, and ancient gods such as the Roman Vulcan deify volcanoes and fire.

The anti-vax environmental lawyer is not worthy of the rehabilitation tour he's getting from pundits and podcasters.

The 1962 Starfish Prime explosion created an artificial aurora visible from New Zealand, impacting Hawaii's infrastructure.

Sarah Clegg’s Woman’s Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi is about ancient demonic figures, expressly the infamous child-killing monsters of the Near East and Mediterranean. Intimately tied to childbirth and infant and child mortality, such monsters were female in form.

Racist displays and stories remain on display in several western European museums. They include grotesque objects depicting African people as “savage” and “wild”. Narratives of a “continent without history” and fantasies of European superiority are still told in ethnographic museums, like the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and the Musée du…