In 1845, Sir John Franklin led an expedition that sailed from England in search of the Northwest Passage. The next year, both of its ships were abandoned in Arctic ice, and the entire 129-member crew perished. For nearly 170 years, efforts to find the missing ships—HMS Erebus and Terror—fell short. Then, in 2014, Erebus was discovered in Canadian waters by a team from Parks Canada (“Franklin’s Last Voyage,” July/August 2016), and now Terror has been found as well—around 60 miles north of its sister ship in the coincidentally named Terror Bay.

Terror was located in September 2016 by an Arctic Research Foundation vessel that detoured to the wreck’s location based on a report from an Inuit crewmember who recalled seeing a piece of wood that looked like a mast sticking out of the ice covering Terror Bay six years earlier. Divers found the ship 80 feet underwater and in extremely good shape. Two weeks later, Parks Canada confirmed the identification, opening a new chapter in the story.

Brain size has traditionally been seen as the best way of comparing the intelligence levels of human ancestors. Now a team of researchers believes it has found a more accurate gauge: cerebral metabolic rate, or the amount of energy consumed by the cerebrum, which can be estimated based on the amount of blood delivered to it. As a proxy for cerebral blood flow, they measured the size of openings in the base of the skull through which the internal carotid arteries pass.

The team studied 35 skulls from 12 hominin species, including Australopithecus africanus, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and modern humans. They found that, over more than three million years of evolution, hominin brain size has increased 350 percent—while cerebral blood flow has increased 600 percent. “This suggests that brain metabolism was being very heavily selected for throughout our evolution,” says Vanya Bosiocic of the University of Adelaide, “and has probably played a very important role in contributing to our intelligence.” The researchers believe that the brain’s growing demand for energy is most likely due to increased synaptic activity and interconnection among neurons.

Archaeologists working near Liverpool, England, recently rediscovered a legendary medieval well. The shallow well was for centuries a popular destination for religious pilgrims, owing to its purported ability to cleanse one of sins and heal certain ailments. It was likely associated with St. Anne, whose cult became popular in England around 1400. By the late nineteenth century, the well was no longer in use and was gradually buried by plowing and other agricultural activity. Although archaeologists were aware of its general whereabouts, its exact location was unknown until recently.

The 6.5-by-6.5-foot well was constructed from local sandstone blocks, with three steps leading down to the water. In the sixteenth century, the structure was also at the center of a mysterious event. The well’s many visitors made it lucrative, and it became the subject of a contentious ownership dispute between a local priest and an agent of a neighboring landowner. The priest ended up putting a curse on the well, only to have it backfire—he died three hours later. Things didn’t go much better for the agent. A few months later, after some serious financial losses and the passing of his only son, he was found dead beside the well with his skull crushed in.