Her activism included efforts to save the Ennis House, an iconic 1920s residence in the Hollywood Hills that was designed by the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The Northridge earthquake in 1994 and heavy rains a decade later caused significant damage. The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the house on its 2005 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. It was partially restored by the nonprofit Ennis House Foundation, then was purchased and fully restored in 2011. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, Keaton called on the Hollywood community to help save the house, which has been featured in numerous films, and eventually joined the Ennis House Foundation board.
Today in history: On Oct. 12,1968, Mexican track and field athlete Enriqueta Basilio became the first woman to light the Olympic flame at the opening ceremonies of the Mexico City Summer Games. Also on this date: In 1492, Christopher Columbus's first expedition made landfall on what is now San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. In 1870, General Robert E. Lee, former overall commander of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War, died in Lexington, Virginia, at age 63.
Researchers from Purdue University will undertake a three-week search of the remote Nikumaroro Island, a five-mile-long coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean. However, Justin Myers, a pilot with almost 25 years of experience, told Daily Mail he thinks the mission is 'barking up the wrong tree'. That's because Mr Myers believes he knows where Earhart's crashed plane really is. The Purdue University expedition is aiming to investigate a mysterious metal cylinder known as the Taraia object, which was spotted in satellite imagery in 2002.
Hosted by The Filipino American National Historical Society FANHS-SCV , join Pinoytown San Jose Tours for a captivating walk through one of San Jose's forgotten Filipino American neighborhoods. Led by local historian Robert "Manong Robert" Ragsac, this tour brings to life the vibrant stories of Filipino pioneers who helped shape the city's multicultural heritage. You'll explore the historic streets once filled with Filipino cafés, pool halls, and community gathering spots, while learning about the resilience and contributions of early Filipino immigrants.
I discovered three perfectly cut shafts hidden beneath the sands. They sit in the triangle between the Great Sphinx, Khufu's Pyramid and Khafre's Pyramid, and may open into a long-forgotten underground world. These are not water wells. They bear no inscriptions, no signs of casual digging, and their geometry is too precise, their walls too smooth, their design too deliberate. Could these shafts be the keys to the network of hidden chambers the Greek philosopher Herodotus once whispered about, possibly connected to the Nile?
The Texas Revolution began on 2 October 1835 with the Battle of Gonzales, and the Texian forces won every engagement for the rest of that year. Their luck changed when Mexican General José de Urrea (1797-1849) won a string of victories, defeating Texian forces at the Battle of San Patricio on 27 February 1836, at the Battle of Agua Dulce on 2 March, at the Battle of Refugio on 14 March, and the Battle of Coleto on 19-20 March.
Witch trials and executions were far from unusual at the time, in the town or elsewhere, but rarely were so many convicted at once. The women Anne Ashby, Mary Brown, Anne Martyn, Mildred Wright, Susan Pickenden, Anne Wilson and Mary Reade had been accused by their neighbours of terrible acts including bewitching to death a 10-day-old baby, the child's mother, and another three-year-old.
Just over 500 years ago, on 3 August of 1492, Christopher Columbus, the admiral from Genoa underwritten by Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Spain, set off on the first of 4 trips across the Atlantic. He sailed from Iberia to the Caribbean, then on to the South and Central American mainlands. Colonies were founded by Columbus and his younger brother Bartholomew; waves of colonists followed in their wake.
One of her most famous portraits allegedly shows the queen as a young girl, holding a shuttle used for weaving in one hand and a red thread in the other. Assumed to have been about seven years old, she wears a steely gaze directed at the observer, typical of a powerful queen-to-be. The acclaimed watercolour, painted in 1762 by Genevan painter Jean-Étienne Liotard, appears in biographies of Marie Antoinette all around the world.
At Topraktepe, the site of ancient Eirenopolis in Turkey, researchers discovered five carbonized loaves, one bearing a portrait of Jesus and an ancient Greek inscription reading, 'With our thanks to Blessed Jesus.' The work, conducted under the direction of the Karaman Museum Directorate, made it possible to recover these fragile organic remains thanks to a natural carbonization process. Exposure to fire under specific conditions of temperature and lack of oxygen preserved the loaves.
Few are loved by their own quite like Jimmy Barry-Murphy and the Cork icon continues to patrol the sidelines with his native St Finbarr's as a GAA obsession continues into his 70s.
The trench warfare of the Western Front during the First World War (1914-18) involved soldiers living and dying in an awful mix of mud, filth, and barbed wire. Trench systems became more sophisticated in layout as the conflict dragged on but remained rudimentary holes in the ground as entire armies attempted to shelter from artillery, gas, machine-gun, and infantry attacks.
This book explores the rise of the Kingdom of Mercia, focusing on the reigns of Æthelbald (716-757) and Offa (757-796). It shows how Mercia became a dominant power in early medieval Britain, laying crucial foundations for the emergence of England. The Birth of the Anglo-Saxons, like my other books about the Early Medieval period, is a portrait of power, how it was exercised at all levels from the humblest household right up to the sceptre-wielding imperium of the greatest warrior kings.
You wanted more quizzes, and we've delivered! Now you can test your wits every day of the week. Each weekday, your host, Ray Hamel, concocts a challenging set of unique questions on a specific topic. At the end of the quiz, you'll be able to compare your score with that of the average contestant, and Slate Plus members can see how they stack up on our leaderboard.
The man who would come to be called Harry Washington was born near the Gambia River, in West Africa, around 1740. As a young man, he was sold into slavery and endured the horrors of the Middle Passage. In Virginia, he was purchased by a neighbor of George Washington, who then bought the young man in 1763 for 40 pounds. After working to drain the colony's Great Dismal Swamp-one of George Washington's many land ventures-he was sent to Mount Vernon to care for the horses.
On the whole, the Founding Fathers, those towering patriarchs, fared poorly when it came to sons. George Washington and James Madison had none. Thomas Jefferson's only legitimate one died in infancy. Samuel Adams also outlived his. With the exception of John Quincy Adams, no other son of a Founder rose to his father's stature. The unluckiest of all may have been Benjamin Franklin, who, in the course of a deeply familial contest, lost a cherished son the hardheaded way: to politics.
Saturday morning would mark the 250th anniversary of the fort's seizure in 1775 by the Green Mountain Boys-a rumbustious militia of proto-Vermonters who spent years violently defending their bite-size territory-but so far the rain was at best blighting and at worst obliterating every enriching activity the Fort Ticonderoga staff had dreamed up. A plan for the reenactors to sleep under starlight when we'd arrived on Thursday had been downgraded to a plan to shiver in a barn all night.
What if one of the most famous and formidable Antarctic exploration vessels in history, whose crew's story of shipwreck and survival has been told for more than a century, wasn't as strong as legend had it? A new research paper about the vessel Endurance casts doubt on some common beliefs about explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship, particularly that it was one of the most well-built ships of its era and that it went down due to the loss of its rudder after becoming trapped in sea ice in 1915.
On 21 November 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee wended its way north into the state that had given it its name. The men were tired and gaunt, an army of scarecrows whose threadbare uniforms, worn-out and faded, hung loosely on their battered bodies and did little to protect against the early winter chill. Many went barefoot, marching over dirt roads that had been churned to mud by the recent torrential rainstorms.
Eustathios Rhomaios was a prominent Byzantine judge and jurist during the late-10th and early- to mid-11th century. He studied Roman Law and began his career under Basil II (reign 976 to 1025) and became the chief judge during the mid-1020s. His legal decisions, collected and compiled into a document called the Peira ('Experience') by a younger colleague of his, were not only celebrated during his own lifetime but also hailed in later ages as 'the most elegant and valued.'
At the end of the summer of 1859 one that was surely hot, dusty, and full of guys in wide-brimmed hats sweating under their shirt collars a small but determined group of gold prospectors decided to venture into Willow Creek Valley, a remote place in northern California whose only claim to fame was that, until then, there was absolutely nothing there except trees, rocks, silence, and the small but persistent possibility of finding something buried in the ground that could change your life.
The novel begins with the rediscovery of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in 1918 and recounts Ibn Tulun's life and legacy in the ninth and tenth centuries. Bassiouney presents Ibn Tulun's benevolent vision to unify all Egyptians in a new city, Al-Qata'i. He becomes so focused on his vision, however, that he cannot see the impact it has on his family or the fate of Egypt. When a betrayal leads to his demise, the rival Abbasid caliph threatens to regain control of Al-Qata'i.
Known for his aggressive style of leadership, he initially led the famous Texas Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia before being promoted to division command and, ultimately, to the command of the Army of Tennessee in the western theater. He was severely wounded several times, losing the use of his left arm at the Battle of Gettysburg (1-3 July 1863) and losing his right leg a few months later
The norns were supernatural female entities responsible for the fates of all living beings in Viking Age Scandinavia. Associated with Yggdrasil, the world tree and central element of the nine realms of Norse cosmology, the norns are not active agents in the stories of Odin, Thor, and Loki. Instead, they linger in the shadowy background of the Viking Age imagination as implacable manifestations of what was, what is, and what is inevitably yet to come.
Today is Monday, Oct. 6, the 279th day of 2025. There are 86 days left in the year. Today in history: On Oct. 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad while reviewing a military parade. Also on this date: In 1927, the era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, a feature film containing both silent and sound-synchronized sequences.
Welcome back for another week of The Atlantic 's un-trivial trivia, drawn from recently published stories. Without a trifle in the bunch, maybe what we're really dealing with here is-hmm-"significa"? "Consequentia"? Whatever butchered bit of Latin you prefer, read on for today's questions. (Last week's questions can be found here.) To get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.
The Wadden Sea region in North Frisia as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site is an ecosystem that is globally unique. At the same time, it is the relic of a former cultural landscape that was extensively shaped by humans. Large areas drowned during a major storm surge known as the 'First Grote Mandränke' in 1362 and were permanently lost.
When the Winchester Mystery House celebrated its 100th anniversary two years ago, Robin Chapman was one of several historians asked to speak to mark the centennial. Intrigued by what Sarah Winchester had done with the acreage surrounding the mansion, Chapman embarked on a research project. She will share her findings in A Winchester Mystery in the Valley of Heart's Delight, on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 5:30-7 p.m., at the Los Altos History Museum
Originally constructed as a home by a merchant named Casparus Mabie, '76 House was later operated as a tavern. One of the country's oldest operating restaurants, it functioned as a key social and political hub that drew locals and soldiers alike during the Revolutionary War. Plenty of history has been made in the restaurant in the past two and a half centuries.
Every culture that has made and used swords has viewed them as extraordinary objects. They feature predominantly in the history, cosmology and mythology of communities across the globe, from Africa to northern Europe, from East Asia to the Indian sub-continent. Their appeal is not solely attributable to humanity's timeless fascination with death. This is clear from the spectrum of meanings attached to swords across time and space, encompassing power, wisdom, joy, protection - and fear.
