Watch out … today is April Fools’ Day and it’s the day for playing pranks on unsuspecting people. We look at why we celebrate on April 1 and some of today's best jokes

Scientists have unearthed the fossils of a fearsome feathered dinosaur with sharp claws and a telltale scar. It lived 67 million years ago and proves dinosaurs continued to evolve until their end

The careful scanning of a 3.6 million year old skull belonging to a fossil named ‘Little Foot’ has proven that early humans had small brains, swung between trees like monkeys and ate vegan diets

A proposal to replace cancelled Anzac Day services with a massive nationwide “light salute” from the safety of Australians’ driveways is attracting huge support

A fossilised mollusc alive alongside the last of the dinosaurs 70 million years ago has shown scientists that a day on Earth once lasted only 23-and-a-half hours

The world’s smallest dinosaur has been discovered embedded in amber. The 100 million-year-old bird, just 5cm long, had bulging lizard-like eyes and a beak packed with 100 sharp teeth

Archaeologists are digging up the site of former convict-period workshops at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania so we can better understand what everyday convict life was like

The factory that makes Violet Crumble is working 24 hours a day to keep up with incredible demand for the historic, purple-wrapped chocolate honeycomb bar

There is a February 29 on this year’s calendar. We explain why and what it has to do with the Sun, the Earth and a calendar created way back in 1582

Australians are becoming world leaders at cooking and eating pancakes on Pancake Tuesday, a fun food day that has its origins as a religious festival

For the first time in more than 400 years, all 12 precious gold and silver tapestries designed by Renaissance artist Raphael have been hung in the Sistine Chapel, making it complete at last

A new and very scary species of dinosaur related to T-Rex and known as the Reaper of Death has been identified after pieces of its skull were rediscovered in a museum drawer

There are several stories about who Valentine was, but the most popular one is that he was a doctor and priest from Rome in the third century who lived and died in the pursuit of love

Travel back in time thousands of years through this NASA animation to look at Earth without oceans, when vast lands allowed ancient people to roam the world

Scientists have recreated the voice of a 3000-year-old Egyptian mummy using 3D printing and an electronic larynx, producing a sound between the vowels in ‘bed’ and ‘bad’

A tiny piece of wood that some Christians believe to be part of the baby Jesus’ manger has returned to Bethlehem just in time for Christmas after 1400 years in Rome

Our feature series and 50-activity workbook will help students understand the history and evolution of Christmas, the religious and cultural aspects of its celebration and how traditions vary across the world

A fascinating new map has plotted out the most common surnames in every country in the world. Can you guess the most common last name in Australia?

Mummified crocodiles, a mongoose, birds, cats and lion cubs are among an incredible discovery uncovered by archaeologists at Egypt’s “City of the Dead”

Earth is so big and so filled with things to see it’s hard to know where to start looking. To help you out, we’ve compiled this collection of incredible sculptures to look at and learn about

Vegemite’s recipe and flavour has not changed, according to the makers of the famous Aussie spread, keen to reassure worried local customers ahead of its historic global launch

By the 1950s, no one wanted to buy a special sort of dough to clean wallpaper. But some creative thinking saved the failing dough company and we all got to play with Play-Doh

In our weekly series, award-winning cartoonist Mark Knight explains why he added an Aussie tradition to his Melbourne Cup drawing after local horse Vow and Declare finished first past the post

Archer was a big horse with a funny running style and a habit of hanging his tongue out. But in 1861, no horse was better than the NSW import when he took home the very first Melbourne Cup

Phil Leitch lives in a castle, wears a suit of armour and is the current World Jousting Champion. He’s also a real, professional, full-time knight known as Sir Reynard. True story!

An Australian-led team of scientists has identified the exact place in northern Botswana that was the home of the earliest ancestors of everyone alive today

Australia had its own Willy Wonka long before Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the real one every bit as eccentric and a genius as the fictional version

The fossilised bones of a winged reptile — nicknamed the Iron Dragon — which flew above Queensland during the age of dinosaurs has been uncovered in the outback

The Royal Australian Mint has made history after releasing the first Australian coin featuring a secret code. The new 50 cent coin has been launched to mark the 70th anniversary of ASIO

Scientists have made a major discovery in solving the mystery of the Loch Ness monster by testing DNA left behind by living things — ruling out the idea it was a dinosaur

A 10-year-old Australian girl has been met from her flight by crowds and an orchestra after becoming the one billionth passenger at Sydney Airport, which turns 100 this year.

The streets of Nagoro appear busy, dotted with people going about day-to-day life at school, at shops and in gardens. But they’re not people, they’re life-size dolls

Scientists have reconstructed the face of our earliest known ancestor from a fossilised skull belonging to a male who lived 3.8 million years ago in the mountains of Ethiopia

Colonial Australia’s first minted coins — the holey dollar and the dump — have gone on show at the Royal Australian Mint. The coins were made by destroying Spanish currency to create our own

Fossil hunters have found a new species of the ferocious-looking, armour-plated stegosaurus, much older than previous finds and in a location that could lead palaeontologists to rewrite history

Laser and sonar technology has revealed hand-etched scores on the back of Sir Donald Bradman’s first cricket bat that are invisible to the naked eye

Bouncing across northern Australia in a Model T Ford on rough tracks made for wagons led these WWI pilots to dream of setting up the outback airline we know as Qantas

In our weekly series, award-winning cartoonist Mark Knight celebrates the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ famous Abbey Road album cover, but his tribute has a twist with a new Fab Four

Scientists believe they have found the world’s oldest living vertebrate, a massive Greenland shark estimated to be up to 512 years old and described as a living time capsule

Using traces of ingredients found in ancient perfumer’s bottles, scientists have recreated the perfume worn by Cleopatra, the glamorous last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt

The gravestone of a woman whose real life story is believed to have inspired the Snow White fairytale has been rediscovered and is now on display in a German museum

Australian palaeontologists have discovered a toddler-sized parrot so tall it could poke an adult in the belly button and at least twice as big as the largest parrot alive today

Incredible new images reveal what Sydney would look like today had some of the alternative harbour bridge designs been given the green light instead of the now-famous coathanger

UPDATED A little bronze statue of a loyal dog has been damaged, upsetting locals who regard it as an icon of Australia’s pioneering heritage. We look at the history of the Dog on the Tuckerbox

The deep-sea explorer who discovered the Titanic and many other shipwrecks is on a quest to solve the 80-year-old mystery of pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart’s disappearance

King Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus has been moved for the first time in 100 years but many believe shifting the royal remains could unleash a deadly curse

In 1969 a boy dropped a message in a bottle into the ocean from a ship off the Australian coast and now another boy has found the bottle and the message’s author has been located

The Royal Australian Mint has released a special coin series to celebrate 50 years since Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind” onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969

It’s time for incredible revelations, reunions and replays as the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and moon landing

Never-before-heard audio tapes reveal Neil Armstrong’s biggest fear ahead of the Apollo 11 trip wasn’t dying on the moon. It was failure to complete the mission and damaging the US’s reputation

UPDATED A student working at NASA in the 1970s bought a heap of junk film and carried it around for 43 years before discovering it was the only surviving original film of the moon landing

The head of a giant wolf that would have roamed the land alongside woolly mammoths has been found in Siberia, complete with perfectly preserved brain, shaggy hair and fierce teeth

Children are being urged to ‘just ask’ their family, friends and community about amazing stories from our wartime history. Roy Cornford’s WWII survival is one such story. Read it here

It is 50 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. Learn all about this historic event and the space race in our digital inquiry kit

In the early days of space exploration, the US and Russia sent rockets, animals and finally humans into the great unknown of our universe in the search for answers about what exists out there

The trio that led the Apollo 11 mission were Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins — three brave astronauts willing to risk their lives for space exploration

The astronauts were prepared to handle any problem imaginable on their moon mission. But trying to find ways to copy conditions on the lunar surface meant using some strange training techniques

NASA built a special-purpose rocket called Saturn V to launch man into orbit and walk on the moon. It was the most powerful of its kind ever built. We take a look at all its components

It took three days for Apollo 11 to reach the moon. There wasn’t much to do in the tiny module apart from eating rehydrated food, exercising and keeping the ship running smoothly

One of the greatest feats in history was realised when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and uttered the famous words: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’

Australia played an unexpected important role in the moon landing by broadcasting the historic moonwalk to more than 650 million people across the world

Conspiracy theories that NASA faked landing on the moon have been popular since 1969. We look at some of the arguments and what the Americans say about them

It’s been more than 40 years since man last stepped on the moon after the high cost of space travel took its toll. But now several companies are racing to take humans back to the lunar surface

Australia’s Prime Minister and other world leaders and veterans are gathering to remember D-Day — June 6, 1944 — one of the most significant days of World War II

Scientists have been stunned after an entire herd of 100-million-year-old dinosaurs was discovered in Lightning Ridge in outback Australia

Warriors from China’s world-famous Terracotta Army — which is considered the Eighth Wonder of the World — have arrived in Australia for a unique arts exhibition