• Iraq reclaims seventeen thousand looted artifacts. (New York Times)

• For sale: “three separate lots of lesbian pulp fiction.” (Hyperallergic)

• Benjamin Banneker and cicadas. (History Today)

• The myths and truths of Captain Eeyore. (Screen Slate)

• An investigation into the lifespans of once-ubiquitous tattoo designs that aged poorly. (Decoder Ring)

• “What exactly happened to ancient Helike and Bura is not clear, despite more than fifty years of scrutiny by archaeologists and geologists. But we can be sure that there was a catastrophe of some kind that destroyed the city and killed many inhabitants, which was sufficiently powerful to make Helike a byword for disaster.” (Aeon)

• “Australian mathematician discovers applied geometry engraved on 3,700-year-old tablet.” (The Guardian)

• “The Surprisingly Long History of Speculation About Extraterrestrials.” (The MIT Press Reader)

• Revisiting News from Nowhere. (The New York Review of Books)

• “Why the U.S. Army tried to exterminate the bison.” (Vox)

• A tour of the Sixth Floor Museum. (Well, Actually)

• This week in obituaries: Roberto Calasso, Richard Trumka, Phillip King, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Abebech Gobena, Dawn Foster, Reynold Ruffins, Carl Levin, Gilbert V. Levin, Saginaw Grant, Denzil Hurley, Mo Hayder, Johnny Ventura, Joan Ullyot, Willie Winfield, Ruth Pearl, Richard Lamm, Steven Weinberg, Floyd Cooper, Paula Caplan, Lynn C. Franklin, Noel Swerdlow, Dave Severance, and Jo Ann Hinckley.