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

Royal couple Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have proudly introduced their adorable newborn son to the Queen and revealed his unusual and bold name

Five centuries since he lived, people still can’t believe how smart inventor, artist, scientist, mathematician, thinker and tech whiz Leonardo da Vinci was

Broken Hill is usually in the news for being hot and dry, but this time it’s about something cool and damp: a special local salad invention called cheeseslaw

Soldiers on an expedition in Nepal have found and photographed large footprints in the snow they believed to belong to the Yeti, or abominable snowman

Tasmanians can claim a long list of world-changing inventions. That list now includes the kids’ birthday party classic fairy bread, just in time for the treat’s own 90th birthday party

A new 50c coin has been released in Australia and it features a historic design element never seen before to highlight the uniqueness of our country and our cultural heritage

Dai Gum Loong, 125m long and with 7000 scales, has flown to Australia to take over from an old dragon called Sun Loong that is ready to retire

Scientists have uncovered fossils of an ancient four-legged whale that walked on land and swam in the sea 43 million year ago

The much-loved, world-famous symbol of Paris has turned 130, after surviving fierce early criticism and an original plan to take it down after just 20 years

A massive, fierce dinosaur nicknamed Scotty has been dug from sandstone. Its leg bones are so big it is thought to have weighed 8800kg when it roamed the Earth

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

Experiments on the cells of a woolly mammoth found preserved in frozen ground has brought scientists a step closer to bringing the prehistoric creatures back to life

A Japanese woman has been honoured as the world’s oldest living person by Guinness World Records. She took time out from studying maths to celebrate by eating chocolate

Australia has won the Ashes 33 times in 137 years, yet the famous Ashes urn stays locked in a cabinet at Lord’s in London. Later this year, it will visit Australia for fans to see

Researchers from several Australian universities have determined the dingo is not a dog but a unique native species of its own