On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr. More

Tower of Pisa is safe from toppling, but it will never stand fully straight – not that the millions of tourists who visit it every year would want it to. Here are 5 facts about the Tower of Pisa... More

One of the most widely held misconceptions about the declaration is that it was signed on 4 July 1776 by all the delegates in attendance, says the US National Archives and Records Administration. More

In this account of the states that were established in Palestine and Syria in the wake of the First Crusade, Malcolm Barber intriguingly bucks a trend in recent crusading studies. More

The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, became law on December 15, 1791. Celebrate its birthday with eight facts about its roots, ratification and legacy. More

This two-decade siege began in the 17th century, when a band of the Knights of Malta raided a fleet of Ottoman ships and fled to the Venetian-controlled city of Candia, located on the island of Crete. More

For more than six weeks in the spring and summer of 1863, the residents of Vicksburg, Mississippi, weathered starvation, scurvy and constant bombardment by Union artillery and gunboats as Ulysses S. Grant’s men laid siege to the crucial Confederate defenses. More

New York’s 19th-century gang activity wasn’t limited to the rough and tumble streets of Manhattan—it also extended into the waters of the East River. The Daybreak Boys were one of the most ruthless crews of “river pirates” who preyed on the city’s booming shipping industry during the late 1840s and 1850s. More

Crime was especially rampant in Manhattan neighborhoods like Five Points, Hell’s Kitchen, the Fourth Ward and the Bowery, where back alleys and tenements became infested with thieves, hustlers and street thugs. More

Ancient Egypt’s “boy king” became pharaoh at the age of nine and ruled for approximately 10 years (c. 1333-1324 B.C.). More

Nicknamed for its red hair, “Ginger” is the most famous of six naturally mummified bodies excavated in the late 19th century from shallow graves in the Egyptian desert. More

You might think the Civil War was only fought with muskets, bayonets and cannons, but those weren’t the only deadly weapons to haunt the battlefields of the 1860s. The war came in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and both the Union and the Confederacy experimented with strange and often gruesome new combat technologies. From early machine More