The use of the letter x as a mathematical unknown is a relatively modern convention. Algebra has been around for a lot longer.
Daryl Benson/Stockbyte via Getty Images
How did the letter x get its enduring role as a symbol of the unknown? A mathematician explains why it’s hard to say for sure.
Disney/ Wikipedia
The Antikythera Mechanism is an actual ancient Greek object that tracked the cycles of the Sun, the Moon and the planets against the stars.
The flag of the 26th of July Movement painted on the wall of a house in Havana, Cuba.
Agencja Fotograficzna Caro / Alamy Stock Photo
The 26 of July Movement became a central part of the movement that emerged triumphant in early January 1959.
Recent heat waves underscore Earth’s new climate state.
Sean Gladwell via Getty Images
Long before thermometers, nature left its own temperature records. A climate scientist explains how ongoing global warming compares with ancient temperatures.
Water and sediment pour off the melting margin of the Greenland ice sheet.
Jason Edwards/Photodisc via Getty Images
The soil was extracted during the Cold War from beneath one of the U.S military’s most unusual bases, then forgotten for decades.
Universal
The subject of the new Christoper Nolan film, Robert Oppenheimer, is often placed next to Albert Einstein as the 20th century’s most famous physicist.
Brooklyn Museum/Wikimedia
No one languished in bed quite like the Victorians
ABC
The history of the goldfields too often focuses on men – but, as new Aussie TV series Gold Diggers gets right, the settlements were filled with women.
When Shauna Bostock began researching a book on her family, she thought it would be limited to her Aboriginal ancestry. But then a late-night phone call led her down a surprising path.
The Roman bathhouse at Birdoswald will be reburied to preserve it for the future.
HE Archaeological Projects Team and University of Newcastle
It might seem odd to rebury what’s been dug up but it’s to make sure what’s found is preserved for future research.
Henry VIII’s copy of Katharine Parr’s Psalms or Prayers.
The Trustees of The Wormsley Fund/Reproduced with permission from The Wormsley Estate.
Henry had always been a theatrically pious king and in his last years he turned to religion with melancholy intensity.
Certain state laws are banning the instruction of critical race theory.
FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images
Scholars examine how state laws that restrict lessons on race could affect students and educators.
Vivacity Lido in Peterborough.
Clare Louise Jackson/Shutterstock
The boom of lido construction in the 20th century was part of the post war public works programme, which aimed to create jobs and promote health.
Wikipedia
Historical research into the infrastructure of protest found that many Australians found ‘quieter’ ways to express their opposition to conflict.
‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ comes out in theatres on June 30. The fifth in a series over 42 years, many of its originating ideas are taken from 19th-century racist archaeology. Will this iteration be different?
(Walt Disney Pictures)
The final Indiana Jones movie is coming out June 30. The fifth in a series over 42 years, many of its ideas are taken from 19th-century orientalist and racist archaeology.
A halfpenny token issued by the Parys Mining Company of Anglesey in 1788. The hooded druid design was used for many years and was the first of hundreds of token designs.
BrandonBigheart/Wikimedia
A Welsh mining company was the first to issue tokens to workers as an alternative form of payment.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney and Chair of the Northern Land Council Samuel Bush-Blanasi unveil the 2023 Barunga Declaration at Parliament House.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
NT Land Councils have presented the Barunga declaration to Prime Minister Albanese, expressing support for the Voice to Parliament. The Barunga Statement in 1988 was an important part of this journey.
Royal Museums Greenwich
What makes billionaires risk their lives to see the Titanic wreck?
Creating an oral history with your grandparents can help to preserve your cultural family history.
i_am_zews/Shutterstock
Pore over family documents such as birth certificates and old passports, photographs and heirlooms, however trinket-like they might seem. Family history requires research in its broadest sense.
Passengers disembarking the Windrush at Tilbury docks on June 22 1948.
Eddie Worth/AP/Press Association Images
The UK needed workers, but government documents reveal British subjects in the Caribbean were still actively discouraged from entering the country