Uatchitodon, the earliest known venomous reptile, lived about 200 million years ago. Its existence is known only from its surviving teeth.

Geologists Have A Missing Time Problem?

"The Great Unconformity" is the technical term for where layers of rock suddenly jump in time - skipping about a billion years forward. The good news is, researchers may have solved what's going on!

First Female Fighter Pilot To Down An Enemy Jet Was Ethiopian! (Probably)

Female Ethiopian captain Aster Tolossa is allegedly the first female pilot to shoot down an enemy fighter jet. She did so in 2000 near Asmara, in Eritrean airspace.

"The life of a good book is far longer than the life of a man. Its author dies, and his generation dies, and his successors are born and die; the world he knew disappears, and new orders which he could not foresee are established on its ruins; law, religion, science, commerce, society, all are transformed into shapes which would astound him; but his book continues to live. Long after he and his epoch are dead, the book speaks with his voice."

Gilbert Highet, on Juvenal. Highet (1906 – 1978) was a Scottish-American classicist, academic, writer, intellectual, critic and literary historian. Juvenal (1st century - 2nd century CE) was a Roman poet who published at least five books of verses. They lived 1,800 years apart, proving the truth of Highet's quote.

Giraffes Were Thought To Be What Now?

The ancient Greeks and Romans thought giraffes were an unnatural offspring of a camel and a leopard. Due to the animal's camel-like shape and leopard-like spots. The camel's Latin name is pretty simple: "camelopardalis." Which is how the camel's scientific name came to be "Giraffa camelopardalis."

The Mystery Mummy Head - Solved!

In 1915, American archaeologists working at the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Deir el-Bersha were surprised to blast into a limestone tomb, and be greeted by a mummy's head perched on a cedar coffin. The room, labeled Tomb 10A, turned out to be the final resting place for a governor named Djehutynakht and his wife. At some point in their 4,000 years of slumber, graverobbers broke in and ransacked the tomb. All their precious objects and jewelry were taken. But the heavy coffin, the head, and its limbless torso were left for the surprised archaeologists to find thousands of years later.

A recent DNA analysis of the head, with help from the FBI, revealed the head belonged to Djehutynakht himself. The analysis was done based on DNA extracted from a molar. Besides solving a hundred-year-old mystery, this is one of the first times viable DNA has been recovered from an ancient Egyptian mummy!

How Old Are Sea Turtles?

The earliest known sea turtle fossils are about 120 million years old. That means they just make it into the Cretaceous Period (which began about 145 million years ago). Sea turtles co-existed with tyrannosauruses and triceratops!

"It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE. His nickname is "the Philosopher"

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    HISTORICAL NON-FICTION

    By Lillian Audette

    This blog is a collection of the interesting, the weird, and sometimes the need-to-know about history, culled from around the internet. It has pictures, it has quotes, it occasionally has my own opinions on things. If you want to know more about anything posted, follow the link at the "source" on the bottom of each post. And if you really like my work, buy me a coffee or become a patron!

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