Coit Tower has its history, and it's definitely got its views -- and some of the best of each is inside the tower itself. The murals, commissioned during the beginning of the New Deal in the 1930s as a way to get artists back to work were painted by some masters in modern art history. After... More >>

Between 1853 and 1861, Fort Point was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent entrance of a hostile fleet into San Francisco Bay. The fort was occupied throughout the Civil War, but the invention of faster, more powerful rifled cannons made brick forts obsolete. In 1886, the... More >>

In ancient Rome, the god of fertility was honored in February, with ceremonial love lotteries and mock-floggings with a bloody goatskin. Even those are a pale reflection of truly bizarre courtships that unfold in the natural world. For example, the common garden snail is a hermaphrodite that... More >>