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If a pizza and an empanada had a baby, it would probably look something like a calzone. Shaped like a dumpling with a pizza flavor, the calzone is a perfect mix of the two revered foods. It's not hard to figure out why some may think the calzone is an American invention. After all, it's in the same realm as the stromboli, created in Philadelphia in the 1950s, and the size of your corner pizzeria calzone is like everything else in America: supersized. But, just like the pizza, calzones are inherently Italian. In fact, they share the same birthplace as...

But maybe don't drink it.In the mid-1930s, British beermaker Greene King brewed and bottled a special ale to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VIII. The only problem? That king was never crowned. In 1936, Edward surrendered his chance to wear the crown, abdicating the throne only 325 days into his unofficial reign so that he could marry American socialite Wallis Simpson. His coronation — which had been scheduled for May 1937 — was called off, his younger brother George VI became king, and all 2,000 bottles of that Coronation Ale were put into storage. Remarkably, that beer stash wasn’t...

Cast a net back 450 million years ago to the Ordovician Era, and you wouldn’t capture anything more than the ancestors of millipedes and worms. However, you might notice tall 29-feet-tall (8 meters) trunks without branches or leaves, towering over a landscape of newly-evolved vascular plants. These trunks, which have been found as fossils all over the world, are now strongly believed to be mushrooms—giant fungal towers that mean the kingdom of fungi produced the first giant land organism. The idea of a ‘fungal forest’ is one that’s often reproduced in fantasy and science-fiction writing. Mushrooms, for many, many reasons,...

(links set to start at 2:22, skipping the short initial remarks and the Magellan TV ad)Potatoes and History | The History Guy:History Deserves to Be Remembered15:36 | 1.18M subscribers | 358K views | 2 years ago

Henry VIII, who ruled England from 1509 until his death in 1547, was known for his voracious appetite. Portraits of Henry show a man almost as wide as he was tall. When he wasn't marrying, divorcing, or beheading his wives (he was on his sixth marriage when he died at age 58), this medieval ruler dined like a glutton. He enjoyed banquets so much that he extended the kitchen of Hampton Court Palace to fill 55 rooms. The 200 members of the kitchen staff provided meals of up to 14 courses for the 600 people in the king's court. Here...

By analyzing proteins found within ancient dental calculus, an international team of researchers provides direct evidence for consumption of milk from multiple ruminants, including yak. In addition, they discovered milk and blood proteins associated with both horses and ruminants...The study presents novel protein findings from an elite Mongol Era cemetery with exceptional preservation in the permafrost. This is the first example of yak milk recovered from an archaeological context.Previous research indicates that milk has been a critical resource in Mongolia for more than 5,000 years. While the consumption of cattle, sheep, goat and even horse milk have securely been dated,...

...This conclusion was drawn from an analysis of residues found in clay vessels discovered in the Kujawy-Pomerania Province...In 2016, while conducting rescue excavations in the vicinity of the village of Sławęcinek (Kujawy-Pomerania), archaeologists discovered ceramic vessels in a Late Neolithic layer (approximately 3650-3100 years ago). The excavation also revealed traces of a small settlement that included four houses, wells, and burial sites.To investigate the vessels and the deposits on their surface, the researchers utilized a multi-stranded proteomic and lipid-analysis. By comparing proteomic data, it is possible to directly identify cheesemaking and other dairy processing methods that enrich curds by examining...

...when did humans start eating snails? Well, researchers have recently discovered the earliest evidence of prehistoric people cooking and eating these terrestrial mollusks. But while you might imagine a rustic version of modern escargot, the snails in question were actually enormous in comparison.A team of researchers from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have found shell fragments of land snails from the Achatinidae family – which can grow to 16 centimeters (6.3 inches) long – at Border Cave, located on a cliff near South Africa's border with Eswatini. The site has been excavated on multiple occasions since the...

A recent study looks at the spatial organization of a Neanderthal hunting camp at the Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter site in Pinilla del Valle (Madrid), and concludes that these groups employed different models of occupation of the space to fit their needs.Abel Moclán, a predoctoral researcher attached to the Universidad de Burgos (UBU), the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), and the Institute of Evolution in Africa (IDEA), is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, which undertakes a spatial analysis of the faunal remains and lithic tools for the Neanderthal...

Snake bones that date back to the Neolithic period, around 6,000 years ago, have been discovered in the Zuojiang River basin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.The longest single vertebra unveiled at the site represents an individual snake belonging to the species Python bivittatus. The vertebra indicates the snake's overall body length exceeded 4.58 meters, surpassing the previous record in China for this species of 3.56 meters.The new discovery has also helped shed light on on the history of hunting snakes in south China, which can be traced back to about 6,000 years ago.Most of the unearthed snake bones had...

One of the oldest copper fishhooks in the world was discovered during excavations in Ashkelon, southern Israel, the Israel Antiquity Authority (IAA) announced on Wednesday.The 6,000-year-old discovery was made in 2018 when the IAA carried out excavations prior to the construction of the Agamim neighborhood in Ashkelon. However, the find is only being presented to the public now; it will be exhibited for the first time at the 48th Archeological Congress on April 3, the IAA press release said."This unique find is 6.5 cm (2.5 inches) long and 4 cm (1.5 inches) wide, its large dimensions making it suitable for...

A group of experts has discovered proof that people during the Bronze Age used drugs in their ceremonies. By examining hair strands from a burial location in Menorca, Spain, researchers have learned that our ancestors took in hallucinogenic drugs derived from plants. This new information presents the initial clear evidence of drug use in olden Europe. These drugs may have been an important part of their traditional events and practices, according to the researchers. The scientists identified three specific substances, scopolamine, ephedrine, and atropine, in three separate hair samples that they replicated. The researchers noted that due to the dangerous...

Meat consumption is coming under fire from a number of different parts of society, but now a savvy firm that blends the worlds of science and food might have a solution that can keep everyone happyA meatball has been made using the DNA of a woolly mammoth, and apparently, it wasn’t very difficult. The miraculous feat of making a meatball out of something that hasn't existed for more than 4,000 years was achieved by an Australian outfit called Vow. The resurrection approach is a fresh take on meeting the growing demand from consumers who don’t want to kill anything to...

<p>A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals.</p><p>The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis.</p>

A large Bronze Age debris deposit in Mycenae, Greece provides important data for understanding the history of animal resources at the site, according to a study published March 1, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jacqueline Meier of the University of North Florida and colleagues.Animals were an important source of subsistence and symbolism at the Late Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece, as evidenced by their depictions in art and architecture, but more research is needed on the animals that actually lived there. In this study, researchers performed a detailed analysis of a large deposit of animal...

...Archaeologists accidentally discovered the world's earliest horseback riders while studying skeletons found beneath 5,000-year-old burial mounds in Europe and Asia... part of the so-called Yamnaya culture, groups of semi-nomadic people who swept across Europe and western Asia, bringing the precursor to the Indo-European language family with them...The new analysis came from 217 human skeletons from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a geographical area that runs roughly from Bulgaria to Kazakhstan... 5,000-year-old horse skeletons show wear on their teeth that could have been from bridles, while others have found possible fenced enclosures. In the same time period, horse milk peptides have been detected...

Elephant Bird Egg What a whole Aepyornis egg would have looked like when freshly laid, seen in a market near the town of Toliara on the southwest coast of Madagascar. Credit: Gifford Miller More than 1,200 years ago, flightless elephant birds roamed the island of Madagascar and laid eggs bigger than footballs. While these ostrich-like giants are now extinct, new research from the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) and Curtin University in Australia reveals that their eggshell remnants hold valuable clues about their time on Earth. Published on February 28 in the journal Nature Communications, the study describes...

The Sandhills of North Carolina is said to be the only place in the world where bees produce purple honey, an iridescent concoction that looks more like alien goo than the sweet nectar we know and love. It sounds like the stuff of legends, something to lure honey and beekeeping aficionados from around the world, but this extremely rare liquid is quite real. Purple honey is said to be sweeter than the amber kind and apparently has some subtle fruit notes as well. Purple honey is a rare treat that usually commands a higher price than the amber kind, but...

A new study has found that foods featured in the keto diet — which prioritizes high amounts of fat and low amounts of carbs — produce the most carbon emissions of six popular diets, while the vegan diet is associated with the lowest carbon footprint. (Photo by iStock) For those on keto or paleo diets, this may be tough to swallow. A new study from Tulane University which compared popular diets on both nutritional quality and environmental impact found that the keto and paleo diets, as eaten by American adults, scored among the lowest on overall nutrition quality and were...

A hen from Michigan, United States, has been crowned the world’s oldest living chicken at an impressive age of 20 years 304 days as of March 1st, 2023. The elderly hen named Peanut was raised from birth by Marsi Darwin, a retired librarian, according to Guinness World Records.