President Donald Trump looks on as his nominee for the chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell takes to the podium during a press event in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington on Nov.

Beyond Hollywood: The Visionaries Who Defined Arthouse Cinema - History Collection 1. Ingmar Bergman Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman revolutionized arthouse cinema with his profound examinations of existence, faith, and the complexities of human relationships. Renowned for masterpieces like The Seventh Seal and Persona,...

From Cold War Relic to 21st Century Flashpoint: The Taiwan Dilemma - History Collection 1. Legacy of the Chinese Civil War Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. The roots of the Taiwan dilemma trace back to the Chinese Civil War, which split China into two rival governments. After the Communist victory in 1949, the defeated Nationalists retreated to Taiwan,...

“Guinea Pigs in Chains”: A History of Medical Experiments on Prisoners - History Collection The Stanford Prison Experiment’s Ethical Legacy Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. Although the Stanford Prison Experiment did not use real prisoners, it powerfully exposed the dangers of unchecked authority, coercion, and inadequate consent in research involving...

Gangsters in Gucci: How 1990s Russia Became an Oligarch Factory - History Collection 4. The Birth of the Russian Mafia Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. As state authority crumbled, organized crime surged to fill the void, forging a fearsome new power structure in Russia’s cities. The Russian mafia offered “protection” for fledgling businesses and enforced...

Tea, Protocol, and Power: U.S. Presidents Behind Palace Gates - History Collection 2. Eisenhower’s Cold War Banquet Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended a grand state banquet at the Kremlin during his historic visit to the Soviet Union. This carefully choreographed affair, featuring toasts and traditional Russian...

First to Fight: The Teens Who Desegregated America's Schools - History Collection 2. Ruby Bridges: A First Grader’s Historic Walk Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first Black child to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Escorted daily by federal marshals, Ruby braved crowds of angry protestors and...

A mosaic of an intimate scene that was stolen from Italy during World War II has been repatriated to Pompeii. The mosaic on a slab of travertine was gifted to a German citizen, now deceased, by a captain of the Wehrmacht who had helped himself to it in 1944 during the German occupation of Italy. The officer was in charge of military supplies in Italy during World War II.There are no more details about its origins on the record. The small amount of information we have comes from the heirs of the deceased who realized it had to have been illegally removed from Italy and voluntarily contacted authorities to return the mosaic.Dating to between the middle of the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D., the mosaic depicts a semi-nude woman with her back to the viewer reaching out to a semi-nude man reclining on a couch. This was a domestic scene rather than the erotic encounter from mythology that were the preferred motifs of the earlier Hellenistic era (4th-1st century B.C.). It is an important example of the transition from heroic figural iconography to domestic love as an artistic motif.The mosaic is executed in the opus vermiculatum technique, figural mosaics made of small tesserae in undulating lines (vermiculatum means worm-like). This type of mosaic work was primarily used for emblemata, the most finely crafted, detailed panels at the center surrounded by floral and geometric motifs created with larger tesserae in the opus tessellatum technique.Small emblemata with domestic scenes like this typically decorated the center of cubiculae, the bedrooms of Roman homes. There are a few comparable pieces meticulous opus vermiculatum mosaics on travertine slabs in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, several of which are known to have come from the luxury villas of Stabiae. While its original home cannot be pinpointed with precision, experts from the Office for the Protection of Archaeological Heritage of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii were able to determine that it came from one of the towns under the shadow of Vesuvius.The panel has been put on temporary display at the Antiquarium of Pompeii where it can be on view to the public pending further analysis and conservation.