The Original Comic Strip? This 970-Year-Old Tapestry Tells an Entire War in Pictures
After almost 1,000 years, the historic Bayeux Tapestry is back where it began.
The 11th Century artwork is thought to have been made in Britain, and it's now on display at the British Museum — one of the UK's largest national museums, located in London — while on loan from France until summer 2027. Think of it as the original comic strip: instead of panels, it uses a continuous, nearly 70-meter-long strip of embroidered fabric (about the length of a football field) to tell the story frame by frame, image after image, all the way across.
The story it tells is the Norman Conquest of 1066: the year William the Conqueror, a duke from Normandy in modern-day France, invaded England and took the throne. Like a comic laid end to end, the tapestry shows the buildup, the battle, and the aftermath — soldiers, ships, horses, and even Halley's Comet all stitched into the sequence. That invasion permanently changed England's ruling family, language, and culture, and is often seen as the starting point of the modern British monarchy.
Moving the tapestry took hours of extremely careful work, since it's so old and delicate. Even people standing near it had to wear protective clothing so stray fibers wouldn't end up on the fabric. It's now displayed flat, inside a protective glass case. Safe to say, it may look like a large piece of fabric, but it's definitely not something you'd want to wipe your hands on if you're missing a napkin.
The loan is also part of a bigger cultural exchange between France and Britain — two neighboring countries separated by the narrow English Channel, with a long and sometimes tense shared history. In exchange for the tapestry, Britain is lending important historical objects of its own back to France.
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Off the coast of Italy, divers have found a Roman ship that sank more than 2,000 years ago, still loaded with its cargo. Italy's culture minister called it "one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years."
The wreck lies about 150 feet underwater, roughly three miles off the coast of Sicily, the island at the tip of Italy's "boot." Fishermen diving in the area spotted it and reported it to authorities. The ship was covered in hundreds of well-preserved amphorae. These were tall clay jars Romans used to store and ship goods, especially wine.
Specialist divers from a branch of Italy's police that protects historical treasures are now studying and recording the site.
Researchers believe more ancient shipwrecks may still be hidden beneath the Mediterranean Sea. These could offer clues about what people traded, transported, and valued thousands of years ago.
Michael Scurr has spent Thursday mornings volunteering at Britain’s National Archives in London for more than a decade, sorting and labeling old government records. One day, he unfolded a document and saw the word “Declaration” printed in big letters across the top.
He had found a rare 1776 printed copy of the United States Declaration of Independence. We just hope he’d washed off the Cheeto dust first.
The copy has quite a backstory. It was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, in mid-July 1776, just days after the Declaration was adopted, to spread the news through the colonies. It ended up aboard the Dalton, an American privateer (a privately owned ship allowed to attack enemy ships in wartime). When Britain’s Royal Navy captured the Dalton, the document was taken too. It was filed away with British naval records and sat there for nearly 250 years without anyone realizing what it was.
Only 11 copies of this New Hampshire printing are known to survive, and this is the only one outside the United States. Instead of tucking it back in a box, the archives put it on public display this summer, in time for the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Why all the fuss over an old piece of paper? The Declaration’s ideas, including the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” went on to inspire independence and rights movements around the world. A copy like this shows that a document’s story can keep going long after the moment it was written.
"Study hard! Get a good job! Stop buying avocado toast!" Young adults hear a lot of advice about money. But BBC reporters looking at life for people in their 20s in the UK found it's not that simple. People in their 20s have been saying that for years. Now there's research to back them up.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a UK group that studies money and the economy, found that earnings for young people have barely grown in the past 15 to 20 years, once you adjust for rising prices. Today's 25 year-olds do earn more than their parents did at the same age. But they earn about the same as people who started working just before the 2008 financial crisis, when banks and economies around the world crashed.
Meanwhile, everyday costs like rent and food are rising faster than paychecks. Young workers also don't have years of savings to fall back on, so they live off what they earn each month. Working harder doesn't always fix it. Many young people face job rejection after job rejection. Those who do find work often deal with long commutes, multiple jobs, and student debt.
That doesn't mean older generations had it easy. But slow pay growth, high costs, a tough job market, and debt add up to a real challenge for today's young adults. So the next time a relative brags about the house they bought at 25, you'll have some facts ready.
Every summer, the days get longer and the temperatures rise. And every summer, social media posts claiming that sunscreen causes cancer, or is a scam, start spreading again.
Some of these posts point to real scientific research but leave out important context. That twists what the study actually found.
One example is a 2023 study that found people who used sunscreen more often were also more likely to develop melanoma, a dangerous type of skin cancer. That sounds scary, but it doesn't mean sunscreen caused the cancer. When two things happen together, one isn't necessarily causing the other.
The researchers point to something called the "sunscreen paradox." People who use sunscreen a lot may also spend more time in strong sunlight. They may also not put on enough sunscreen or reapply it often enough. So the extra sun exposure, not the sunscreen, is likely what raises their risk.
Sun exposure is a balancing act. A little sunshine helps your body make vitamin D, which you need. Too much can damage the DNA in your skin cells. Sunscreen cuts down on the ultraviolet (UV) rays that reach your skin. These are the invisible rays from the sun that cause sunburns. Experts recommend using sunscreen along with shade and protective clothing. It takes a little more planning before a beach day, but it's worth it.
Off the coast of Italy, divers have found a Roman ship that sank more than 2,000 years ago, still loaded with its cargo. Italy's culture minister called it "one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years."
The wreck lies about 150 feet underwater, roughly three miles off the coast of Sicily, the island at the tip of Italy's "boot." Fishermen diving in the area spotted it and reported it to authorities. The ship was covered in hundreds of well-preserved amphorae. These were tall clay jars Romans used to store and ship goods, especially wine.
Specialist divers from a branch of Italy's police that protects historical treasures are now studying and recording the site.
Researchers believe more ancient shipwrecks may still be hidden beneath the Mediterranean Sea. These could offer clues about what people traded, transported, and valued thousands of years ago.
Michael Scurr has spent Thursday mornings volunteering at Britain’s National Archives in London for more than a decade, sorting and labeling old government records. One day, he unfolded a document and saw the word “Declaration” printed in big letters across the top.
He had found a rare 1776 printed copy of the United States Declaration of Independence. We just hope he’d washed off the Cheeto dust first.
The copy has quite a backstory. It was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, in mid-July 1776, just days after the Declaration was adopted, to spread the news through the colonies. It ended up aboard the Dalton, an American privateer (a privately owned ship allowed to attack enemy ships in wartime). When Britain’s Royal Navy captured the Dalton, the document was taken too. It was filed away with British naval records and sat there for nearly 250 years without anyone realizing what it was.
Only 11 copies of this New Hampshire printing are known to survive, and this is the only one outside the United States. Instead of tucking it back in a box, the archives put it on public display this summer, in time for the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Why all the fuss over an old piece of paper? The Declaration’s ideas, including the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” went on to inspire independence and rights movements around the world. A copy like this shows that a document’s story can keep going long after the moment it was written.
"Study hard! Get a good job! Stop buying avocado toast!" Young adults hear a lot of advice about money. But BBC reporters looking at life for people in their 20s in the UK found it's not that simple. People in their 20s have been saying that for years. Now there's research to back them up.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a UK group that studies money and the economy, found that earnings for young people have barely grown in the past 15 to 20 years, once you adjust for rising prices. Today's 25 year-olds do earn more than their parents did at the same age. But they earn about the same as people who started working just before the 2008 financial crisis, when banks and economies around the world crashed.
Meanwhile, everyday costs like rent and food are rising faster than paychecks. Young workers also don't have years of savings to fall back on, so they live off what they earn each month. Working harder doesn't always fix it. Many young people face job rejection after job rejection. Those who do find work often deal with long commutes, multiple jobs, and student debt.
That doesn't mean older generations had it easy. But slow pay growth, high costs, a tough job market, and debt add up to a real challenge for today's young adults. So the next time a relative brags about the house they bought at 25, you'll have some facts ready.
Every summer, the days get longer and the temperatures rise. And every summer, social media posts claiming that sunscreen causes cancer, or is a scam, start spreading again.
Some of these posts point to real scientific research but leave out important context. That twists what the study actually found.
One example is a 2023 study that found people who used sunscreen more often were also more likely to develop melanoma, a dangerous type of skin cancer. That sounds scary, but it doesn't mean sunscreen caused the cancer. When two things happen together, one isn't necessarily causing the other.
The researchers point to something called the "sunscreen paradox." People who use sunscreen a lot may also spend more time in strong sunlight. They may also not put on enough sunscreen or reapply it often enough. So the extra sun exposure, not the sunscreen, is likely what raises their risk.
Sun exposure is a balancing act. A little sunshine helps your body make vitamin D, which you need. Too much can damage the DNA in your skin cells. Sunscreen cuts down on the ultraviolet (UV) rays that reach your skin. These are the invisible rays from the sun that cause sunburns. Experts recommend using sunscreen along with shade and protective clothing. It takes a little more planning before a beach day, but it's worth it.