History feed
AD 79
Pompeii's famous body casts were made by filling cavities left after buried bodies decomposed. Their shapes preserve evidence of victims, but the visible surfaces are casting material rather than human bodies turned into stone.
2,500
Cleopatra lived closer to the 1969 Moon landing than to the construction of the Great Pyramid. The pyramid was already about 2,500 years old when she was born.
4,000
A surviving population of woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island while Egyptians were building the Great Pyramid. These Arctic animals persisted until about 4,000 years ago, long after most mainland populations disappeared.