See Harvard’s early history through Indigenous voices

The Wampanoag, explained

Explore Thanksgiving beyond the familiar Pilgrim narrative and learn about the Wampanoag Nation. Trace how early cooperation gave way to disease, conflict, and loss—and how Wampanoag traditions and perspectives continue to shape the understanding of the holiday today.

Hear the untold colonial backstories of the British Museum’s most famous artifacts

This podcast from VICE’s Unfiltered History Tour visits the British Museum’s prized objects through accounts from experts and communities from which they were taken.

Native voices share their histories along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

Tribal historians recount their peoples' histories and perspectives on the Lewis and Clark expedition, offering an Indigenous narrative of the lands, encounters, and legacies that shaped the journey.

Discover the deep history of Indigenous Hand Talk

This video explores Plains Indian Sign Language, part of a broader system known as Hand Talk that dates back centuries. It traces regional variations across North America—and how residential schools worked to suppress its use.

A free archive of firsthand historical documents from explorers of America

Maintained by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the American Journeys collection contains more than 18,000 pages of primary source documents—journals, letters, maps, and accounts written between roughly 1000 CE and the early 1800s. These include eyewitness records of the Norse arrival in North America, Spanish conquistador expeditions, and the Lewis and Clark journey. Browse this list of highlights where pages from the original texts are specified (clicking a link opens a PDF).

Yale returns Inca artifacts to Peru

From the time he came upon Machu Picchu in 1911, Hiram Bingham began removing artifacts and human remains from the site and bringing them back to Yale University. Yale's Peabody Museum held them for 100 years, despite demands by the Peruvian government and the public that they be repatriated. Finally, in 2011, Yale returned thousands of items, including ceramics, jewelry and human skeletons.

History finds of 2021

The year’s most exciting discoveries include a Viking “piggy bank,” a lost Native American settlement and a secret passageway hidden behind a bookshelf

A look at Harvard University's endowment

​Harvard University holds the world's largest academic endowment, valued at $53.2B in fiscal year 2024. This official Harvard webpage explains how the endowment supports the university's mission, funding areas like financial aid, faculty positions, and research initiatives.

The Corps traded gifts with many native tribes as a sign of goodwill

They offered peace medals, beads, cloth, and mirrors, while receiving food, horses, furs, and guidance that helped them navigate and survive the western wilderness. This image collection showcases items the expedition collected.

William James laid the foundation for psychology as a scientific discipline in the US

Though initially trained in painting, James would help establish Harvard's psychology department as a distinct science rather than an extension of philosophy. He taught one of the first psychology courses in America and is credited as one of the founders of American Pragmatism.

Browse Emily Dickinson's collection of plant life

The poet began collecting plant life as a teen and assembling a herbarium, a collection of dried and pressed plants. The original book is housed in Harvard's rare book collection, but you can view digital scans of every page through the university's digital library.

The Archaic period marked Native Americans' shift from big-game hunting to foraging

Beginning around 8000 B.C.E., Indigenous peoples began relying on diverse food sources—including wild game, plants, seeds, and fish—and moved away from large-mammal hunting. Archaeological findings from this era suggest some communities began cultivating crops and establishing irrigation systems, indicating a shift toward less-nomadic lifestyles.

The history of infographics: cave art to interactive visuals

When did humans first create infographics? This article and related infographics detail how artistic data representations have evolved alongside humans and other hominins. The roots of infographics can be traced back to cave paintings, such as...

See the plot of land where Thoreau built his Walden cabin

Harvard's Lawrence Buell takes viewers down to Walden Pond to show them the spot in the woods where Thoreau constructed his modest cabin. Along the way, he reads from "Walden" and explains why Thoreau's text still matters 170 years after its publication.

See a data visualization of the East India Company's trade

This tool visualizes the East India Company’s trade from 1760 to 1834, letting you track shipments of tea, textiles, metals, and more. Users can sort by commodity, origin, destination, and date to see London’s vast imperial supply network that shaped the British Empire.

The earliest colonial schools were often religious

The earliest American schools were far from our notions of “public” or “private”—they were neighborhood institutions, often founded by religious groups, that sought to educate children academically and spiritually.

Read biographies of 3 generations of the Adams family

The Massachusetts Historical Society provides biographical profiles covering three generations of the Adams family—using its extensive archive of family papers and correspondence to trace one of the most notable dynasties in American political history.

Stonehenge was part of a much larger prehistoric landscape

Long before Stonehenge was built, the Salisbury Plain was already dotted with ceremonial sites, burial mounds, and large-scale earthworks. These landscape maps reveal a densely inhabited region shaped by sophisticated prehistoric communities with ambitious public projects.

A Canadian tourism campaign turns every whale sighting—including ones from decades ago—into a live, crowdsourced migration biography

Humpback flukes (or tails) are as individually distinct as fingerprints, which means a single photo is enough to match a whale to its full sighting history. Every upload adds a chapter (the database goes back to the 1970s) and the site uses AI to render that data as narrative, not just data.

How to conserve a Yup'ik mask

The Met’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove of information about the museum and its collections. In this short video, conservationist Caitlin Mahony works with Yup’ik dancer Chuna McIntyre to understand the significance and proper display of a native Alaskan mask that’s over a century old. McIntyre helps illuminate the stories behind many of the mask’s decorative elements and explains how it would be used in traditional Yup’ik ceremonies.

Kansas has been home to the Museum of Deaf History, Arts & Culture since 2001

The Museum of Deaf History, Arts and Culture—a small, independent museum—documents discrimination against the deaf and the unique culture and history of people with hearing loss in the US.

From 19th-century whalers to startup accelerators, venture capital has a pretty exciting history

While the aforementioned whaling industry has a lot of similarities to today’s venture fund models, the first modern venture capital firm wasn’t founded until 1946.

Indigenous art's influence on pop art often goes uncredited

Keith Haring’s iconic imagery, often known for its accessibility, was deeply inspired by the artwork of the Indigenous people of Australia. Their artwork influenced aspects of Haring's paintings, such as flat block colors and symmetrical compositions. While some critics find Haring to have appropriated their culture, others find his work to be pushing a message of unity and togetherness.

An encyclopedia of anthropology

This online database offers articles and additional resources for all things anthropology. This free resource is filled with peer-reviewed entries that cover topics ranging from addiction to writing, and offers anthropological insight into more...

Women were barred from MBA enrollment for half a century

In 1908, Harvard launched the first modern MBA—and only admitted male candidates. The first full-year traditional female MBA students wouldn’t enroll at Harvard until 1963. Learn more about the history of the first women to receive their MBAs on Harvard’s website.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.