Human Behavior, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 31, 2020

Why do people confess to crimes they didn't commit?

The confession has been called the king of evidence, as good as a conviction. And so it seems incredulous that innocent people would incriminate themselves by confessing to something they didn't actually do. But more than 300 men and women, after spending months, years, even decades in U.S. prisons, have...

Jan 31, 2020

Why was whaling so big in the 19th century?

In the mid-1800s, a seaman named Charles Nordhoff found himself on the deck of a ship, coated head to toe in the fat of a recently dispatched whale. Everything is drenched with oil. Shirts and trowsers are dripping with the loathsome stuff. The pores of the skin seem to be...

Nov 30, 2021

Why do we stick out our tongues when we're concentrating?

The protruded tongue is often our proof of a child's ultimate concentration — for example, when a youngster is learning to write letters or an infant is trying to mimic their parents. But it's not just kids; even adults stick out or press their tongues to the roofs of their...

Oct 31, 2021

What were the Crusades?

The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated in 1095 by the Roman Catholic Church. They continued, in various forms, for centuries. The most well-known Crusades took place between 1095 and 1291 in the Near East, where European Christian armies attempted to recover the city of Jerusalem from Islamic...

Sep 30, 2021

Secret words exchanged between Marie Antoinette and rumored lover uncovered in redacted letters

Beloved, madly and tender friend are among the censored words scientists recently uncovered in a series of secret letters Marie Antoinette exchanged with her close friend — and rumored lover — Swedish count Axel von Fersen. Von Fersen and Antoinette, queen of France and wife of King Louis XVI, exchanged...

Aug 31, 2021

Lumpy tumor shown on facial reconstruction of Neanderthal who lived on 'drowned land'

You can now gaze into the crinkly eyes of Krijn, a young Neanderthal man who had a tumor growing on his skull when he died up to 70,000 years ago. In 2001, an amateur paleontologist found a piece of Krijn's skull while sifting through sediments collected from the bottom of...

Aug 31, 2021

Who was Herodotus?

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian born around 484 B.C. He was from the city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey) in Caria, a region in southwestern Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). While much about his life is unknown, we do know a little about his origins and how he became known...

Apr 30, 2021

Frederick Douglass: The slave who became a statesman

Though he started life as a slave, Frederick Douglass became an abolitionist, orator, writer, statesman and ambassador. He liberated himself in 1838 and in 1845 published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, (The Anti-Slavery Office, 1845). The book, alongside his work for the...

Mar 31, 2021

Was Manhattan really sold for $24 worth of beads and trinkets?

In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed down the river in present-day New York that would one day bear his name. The Englishman was an emissary of the Dutch and had been dispatched to chart a new passage to Asia, where the Dutch West India Company wanted to expand its trade. Hudson...

Feb 28, 2021

String of code sells for $69 million

A digital collage just sold for more than $69 million at an online auction, according to news reports. The artwork was produced by digital artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, and is a composite of 5,000 individual drawings, according to the auction house Christie's. Winkelmann began creating the work...

Dec 31, 2020

What if temperature determined a baby's sex?

The series Imaginary Earths speculates what the world might be like if one key aspect of life changed, whether related to the planet or humanity. The sex of humans is largely controlled by the X and Y sex chromosomes. However, in many reptiles and fish, sex is instead influenced by...

Oct 31, 2022

The rise of the first lioness, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in All About History 123

At one time the medieval Crusader Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine escaped kidnapping plots and assassination attempts to become the Queen of England after marrying the future Henry II. This would prove to be a pivotal moment in history, as she helped to forge the legendary Plantagenet dynasty. However,...

Oct 31, 2022

Are humans inherently violent?

The earliest human civilizations appeared between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago; since then, humans as a species have been entirely at peace for approximately 268 years. And as many as 1 billion people may have perished as a direct result of war, according to What Every Person Should Know About...

Aug 31, 2022

Who invented chocolate?

Chocolate is a delight whether we're biting into a bar or sipping hot cocoa, but who was the original inventor of this treat? Although it's now familiar as candy, chocolate's origins are much deeper. The individual who discovered how to make chocolate is lost to time, but it was probably...

Aug 31, 2022

Are Mesopotamia and Babylon the same thing?

In world history class, students often learn that human civilization arose in Mesopotamia — the so-called Fertile Crescent — and in the same breath, many teachers dive into the history of Babylon. But are Mesopotamia and Babylon the same thing? The answer is no, they are not the same; in...