The IQ Blog
The History Behind the Sky
Deep dives into the astronomy, astrology and cultural history of each celestial event. No horoscopes. Sources at the foot of every post.
The Night the Stars Fell: The 1833 Leonid Storm and This Week’s Shower
A meteor storm in 1833 launched a new science and renamed a year in Lakota history. The same shower peaks on November 17–18.
Read the post →Babylon Built Your Zodiac: A 2,400-Year History of the Twelve Signs
The twelve signs began as a Babylonian coordinate system. Personality came much later, and the sun-sign column is younger than sliced bread.
Read the post →Seventeen Minutes of Light: How the Ancient World Built for the Winter Solstice
The December solstice arrives on the 21st. Five thousand years ago, people were already building in stone to catch it.
Read the post →Nothing under that topic yet. New posts go out with the Sunday briefing.
How we source: astronomical dates and times come from NASA, the U.S. Naval Observatory, JPL Horizons and timeanddate.com. Historical claims are checked against museum collections and published scholarship, and each post lists what it used. If we get something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.