RIP Jonathan 😭

It would help us a LOT if you were to read and share this; we're trying our best to demonstrate that well-sourced history and archaeology news can be popular, and also to normalise the foregrounding of the peer-reviewed papers that are so often behind the (often sensationalised) stories we see.

Elizabethan artist John White drew the first pictures of Inuit people that Europeans had ever seen. But scholars debate how he did it. Some say White merely painted the Inuit in England, after they arrived as captives in 1577. Here’s why I believe White was actually in the Arctic … 1/15

John White is known as the governor of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated settlement in America. But before that, White showed Europeans their first paintings of Arctic people. Who was John White—and how did he end up in the Arctic? katlong.substack.com/p/an-elizabe...

Ladies long program medal round let’s gooooo ⛸️

Get in losers I’m watching the men’s figure skating medal round ⛸️

You never know what you’re going to find in the archives 🐋

Ok I’m watching the Olympics’ figure skating team event finals ⛸️, spoilers ahead … loved Kam/O’Shea’s performance, incredible heart and spirit, and gorgeous lifts

To quote “All the President’s Men” … “Nothing’s riding on this except the first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.”

Also my first thought!

There’s a lot going on in the world right now. Maybe you need a break. With cold bois and a missing love letter. Introducing Arctic Archives, my newsletter uncovering gripping stories from the history of Arctic exploration and science. First up: the search for a lost message on Svalbard!

I regret to inform my followers that when the Olympics starts this becomes a figure skating stan account ⛸️

"Came into town, cleaned [the seal] up, wrapped it in two layers of Visqueen and tied it all shut, put some handles on it and took it out to the airport, weighed it in, and it was ready to ship."

David Denby's biography advice: "Think of the reader’s needs as well as your own needs. Which means you must think of yourself as a writer first, before thinking of yourself as a biographer." 🔥

@richardconniff.bsky.social's bizarre life and work of Charles Waterton, pioneer of taxidermy—and let's not forget his bitter feud with John James Audubon over whether North American vultures hunted by sight or smell. Also, you'll never guess what this strange humanoid figure is made from

1. Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people. 2. 80 percent of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet 3. Have the network bros heard of Camp Century?

Road builders in Brazil dismantle ancient coastal middens in the 1940s-'50s. Random bones and artifacts sent to local museum, boxes stored for decades without being studied. Now, researchers finally look and discover oldest-known whale harpoons, pointing to Indigenous open-sea whaling 5000 yrs ago!

I received an email today from a woman who had heard all her life she was a descendant of Harriet Tubman. Mary Dennard helped her prove it. Now, the woman is educating all of her nieces and children that they are Harriet's cousins. This cynical scribe shed a tear. www.thebanner.com/politics-pow...

An interesting thing about Greenland is on the road between Kangerlussuaq (Greenland's only inland community because it used to be a US military base) and the ice sheet there are signs warning you to under no conditions go off road. The US mined the area during WWII but didn't map the mines

👀

WHAT

It's dangerous to go alone. Take these.

I *just* learned about this exhibit about the history of studying whales at MIT’s museum through Jan 5, so I don’t have time to check it out! But I hope #WilliamScoresbyJr makes an appearance

“… home to a fishing fleet that regularly trawls up the bones of ancient megafaunae from the drowned Doggerland in its nets, among them hippopotamus, rhinoceros and mammoth, as well as the remains of Atlantic grey whales …” @philiphoare.bsky.social on the natural history of these islands

Gateway Arch shrouded in fog from my visit to St. Louis today

Visited Natural Bridge State Park in Virginia on my road trip from Maryland to Oklahoma for the holidays. A popular 19th C. tourist attraction that was painted by Frederic Edwin Church and once owned by Thomas Jefferson!

🧪🧵: For years, the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript (VMS) has puzzled medievalists, linguists & codebreakers. Today, I’m publishing a peer-reviewed paper describing a new model for how it may have been written. Presenting the Naibbe cipher: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2025.2566408

“Indian people have long known of the land and our history and presence here,” said Anne Richardson, chief of the roughly 300-member Rappahannock Tribe. “But so often things aren’t considered ‘real’ until they’re found or ‘discovered.’ This validates what we’ve long known.”

Pre-Thanksgiving Day hike along the Potomac. It’s 70 degrees!!!

This seems like a play to cut NPS profitability to make it easier to open these lands up to extraction. 35% of NPS visitors are from overseas

Charming marginalia of a 'sea horse' from William Scoresby Senior's whaling journal of 1794. Unfortunately it didn't end well for the poor walruses

Traditions that sustained the Inuits for many generations in some of the world’s most hostile conditions are vanishing along with the ice. Ben Taub reports from the most remote settlement in Greenland. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/2irCnd

Was researching something else and stumbled upon this intriguing gem

#WilliamScoresbyJr identified the Arctic food web for the first time in 1816, noting that the largest animals (whales) depend on the smallest (phyto/zooplankton): "And thus we find a dependent chain of existence, one of the smaller links of which being destroyed, the whole must necessarily perish."

Another amazing find about British Columbia's sea wolves: wapo.st/49Z0zon

“The Vatican said Saturday the items were given back during the Holy Year, exactly 100 years after the 1925 exhibition where they were first exhibited in Rome as a highlight of that Jubilee.”

14 November 1797: birth of Scottish geologist Charles Lyell at Kinnordy in Forfarshire. 'An ardent man of science with a very round, short face resembling the Emperor Alexander of Russia, a fine forehead and altogether a gentlemanly exterior’, best known for his 1830–33 Principles of Geology.

Climate change has disastrous effects on Indigenous communities in Southwestern Alaska, and it is also damaging precontact Yup'ik #archaeology. Charlotta Hillerdal writes on the threat and steps being taken in the latest #AntiquityBlog 🏺 📷 Rick Knecht 🔗 buff.ly/KOUaA9H

Visited a remnant of the last ice age in NE Illinois! Volo Bog is the southernmost open-water quaking bog in North America, created in a kettle hole left by a receding glacier about 10,000 years ago. Now a rare habitat for carnivorous plants!

As a Marylander I dunk on Virginia frequently but tonight, good job guys

John Playfair taught my biography subject #WilliamScoresbyJr in his natural history course at the U of Edinburgh in 1806—the epicenter of the Neptunism vs. Vulcanism geological debate. Scoresby leaned Neptunist! His notebook from Playfair's lectures (yes he misspelled Edinburgh on the cover):

Do you love bogs and Halloween? If so, please follow and share this thread to explore the eerie, the dark and the supernatural side of bog ecosystems. BogBoo. 1/ You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, something not everyone knows how to love. -Warsan Shire

Just incredible that a cargo ship made TWO crossings of the Northwest Passage in a single season. 120 years ago it took Roald Amundsen three years to get through the ice that no longer exists

#WilliamScoresbyJr, my biography subject, predicted that bowheads were extremely long-lived due to the length of their baleen back in the 1820s! Now we another clue as to why they’re the longest-lived mammals on Earth

Stolen scrimshaw!

What a metaphor

Senescence at Sugarloaf Mountain (near Comus, Md.)

Welp, after 9+ years, my time as Mental Floss’s science editor has come to an end. I could not have asked for a better bunch of weirdos to be my co-workers (and who also got laid off). You know what this means: a thread of greatest hits! 🧵1/n

Really looking forward to this!

A great lede can be less than 10 words: "The East Wing of the White House is gone." Via @ddiamond.bsky.social @jonathanreports.bsky.social @oliviacgeorge.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...