44 Photos Of The Devastation And Desolation Of America's Rust Belt, History's Most Outrageous Court Jesters, And More

Explore this week's most popular stories on History Uncovered. [History Uncovered]( [Inside The Rise And Fall Of The Rust Belt In 44 Striking Images]( [For decades, the Manufacturing Belt thrived as the center of America's steelmaking and manufacturing industries. But in the mid-20th century, this region began to experience rapid economic decline and population loss due to foreign competition, free trade agreements, and new technology — which most areas still haven't recovered from.]( [Archaeologists At Chichén Itzá Just Discovered A 1,000-Year-Old Statue Of A Maya Warrior In A Serpent Helmet]( [45 Heartbreaking Photos Of The Great Depression In Haunting Color]( [While the Plains states were ravaged with one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, large ramshackle settlements for the newly homeless became the urban hallmark of the Great Depression.]( [Napoleon Bonaparte Wasn't Actually Short — So How Did This Pervasive Myth Begin?]( [British cartoonist James Gillray's caricatures of Napoleon as a short, hot-tempered man were so popular that Napoleon himself reportedly said they "did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down."]( [A Rare 'Treasure Box' Of Unopened Letters To 18th-Century French Sailors Has Been Read For The First Time]( [Letters sent to the ship Galatée were put in storage after it was captured during the Seven Years War. Now, they've been read for the first time.]( [9 Outrageous Court Jesters Throughout History, From Roland The Farter To Jane The Fool]( [From Roland the Farter to “Lord Minimus” Jeffrey Hudson, these court jesters lived to entertain kings, queens, and their royal guests.]( [Inside The Shocking History Of Fanta, Nazi Germany's Answer To Coca-Cola]( [When America joined the fight against the Nazis during World War II, Germany's Coca-Cola branch could no longer import the ingredients they needed — so Max Keith, the head of Coca-Cola Deutschland, created Fanta as a drink that he could market to Germans.]( [The Astonishing Story Of Juliane Koepcke, The Girl Who Fell Two Miles Out Of A Moving Plane — And Survived]( [After miraculously surviving a two-mile fall to Earth and sustaining just a broken collarbone and cuts on her legs, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke followed a jungle river for 11 days, surviving only on candy she'd found at the crash site until she stumbled upon some loggers in a small hut.]( [Did Lee Harvey Oswald Really Kill John F. Kennedy — Or Was He Set Up?]( [11 American Landmarks Destroyed By Development And Suburbanization]( [New York City's original Penn Station was a "beautiful Beaux-Arts fortress" with a 138-foot-high ceiling, 84 Doric columns, and 22 eagle sculptures guarding the entrance — until it was demolished in the 1960s to make way for Madison Square Garden.]( [Who Was Axis Sally? Inside The True Story Of Mildred Gillars, The 'American Voice Of Nazi Propaganda']( [What Happened On This Day In History]( [On November 17, Elizabeth I becomes the Queen of England in 1558, serial killer H. H. Holmes is arrested in 1894, and more important events.]( [Listen To The Latest History Uncovered Podcast]( [In 1949, priests performed an exorcism on a boy referred to as "Roland Doe," a.k.a. Ronald Hunkeler, in a chilling ordeal that became the real-life inspiration for The Exorcist.]( [Become An All That's Interesting Member]( [For just $4.99 a month, you'll enjoy All That's Interesting without ads, receive a quarterly letter from the editor, and get exclusive access to premium podcast episodes.]( [Unsubscribe]( [Update Subscription]( [History Uncovered On Instagram]( [History Uncovered On Facebook](