This story appears in the October 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine. History rarely unfolds like ... among the rare manuscripts and royal archives in Lisbon has cobbled together enough ...

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This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Where do babies come from? The Aztecs’ answer to the classic child’s question was that they came ...

This story appears in the November/December 2016 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Sparta’s enemies, when facing the intimidating Spartan forces, would see a wall of shields ...

This story appears in the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Throughout history, small states have come out of nowhere, and rapidly become great powers. This was the ...

This story appears in the August 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. Carl Sagan spent his childhood immersed in Mars. The future scientist, an avid reader of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s ...

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Depicted on a tetradrachm, the Olympian Dionysus was the god of wine, an important part of the ...

This story appears in the November 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. Become a member of National Geographic to explore more incredible images and stories from our archives. Turkey ...

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. On a spring day in 1480, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia ordered various astrologers to his home in Rome to ...