The Museum Hack Blog

How a beef between King Harold of England and William the Bastard changed the English language forever (and gave us the word “beef”).

Look, everyone knows cats are in league with Satan. But did medieval Europeans really kill them all for it?

The worst president in history that you probably know nothing about.

When you’re a Caesar, you’re never crazy. You’re “eccentric.”

When Teddy Roosevelt was shot at a campaign stop in 1912, he kept the bullet and gave his speech.

From slave trade galley, to democratic pirate ship, to waterlogged husk off the coast of Cape Cod—this is the story of the Whydah.

Pythagoras? Yeah, he was a cult leader.

If it doesn’t have cryptic death dioramas, brutal sacrifices, and alcohol poisoning, it ain’t a Viking funeral.

The Greeks played it while besieging Troy, Caligula cheated at it, and the church tried to ban it: it’s backgammon, and it’s been around for a while.

Alexandria was home to the world’s greatest library, until someone set it on fire.

Long before Winifred Sanderson told the partygoers of Salem, MA, to “Dance! Dance until you die!” a small town in the Holy Roman Empire was consumed by a serious, if strange, affliction: its citizens were struck by a dancing plague.