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“Chicago May” was a classic swindler who conned her way around the world in the early twentieth century. She was also a sign of hard times.
A small Ohio town tried to escape America’s addiction to rectangular grids. It didn’t last long.
The National Defense Education Act of 1958 meshed with white anxiety about the desegregation of schools.
The Trojan War was fought in Finland and Ulysses sailed home to Denmark, says one controversial theory.
It's time for an honest conversation.
Benjamin Breen on his greatest revelations while writing about the birth of psychedelic science.
Almost everything we can observe and measure follows what's known as a normal distribution, or a Bell curve. There's a profound reason why.
The Uros of Lake Titicaca live on floating islands made from reeds. How did they get there?
The study suggests that human ancestors expanded across Europe faster than previously thought.
The Earth that exists today wasn't formed simultaneously with the Sun and the other planets. In some ways, we're quite a latecomer.
The world’s highest mountain is also the world’s highest cemetery, with some bodies serving as creepy landmarks for today’s climbers.
New DNA analyses raise questions over the theory that Christopher Columbus and his men brought syphilis to Europe.
Skilled hunters adapted to the changing landscape and left tantalizing clues to who they were.
Uncovering the story of Milan Hausner, the Sadská clinic, and LSD psychotherapy behind the Iron Curtain.
Neuroscience supports the notion that an escape from conventional perspectives can be a gateway to spectacular insights.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a man of many faces. European historian Michael Broers explains which are featured on the silver screen and why.
With the invention of the leap year, the Julian calendar was used worldwide for over 1500 years. Over time, it led only to catastrophe.
Like many of us, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius hated waking up early, but his stoic philosophy always helped him get out of bed.
The ominous cloud of acid rain hasn't vanished but rather drifted toward the developing world.
A basement renovation project led to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime: the Derinkuyu Underground City, which housed 20,000 people.
When battles raged in ancient cities, their rocks blazed so brightly that they could be reoriented according to Earth's magnetic field.
In pre-War Cambridge, students had to ace an interview with Ludwig Wittgenstein to attend his lectures — Alan Turing passed that test, and went on to create one of his own.
The Parthenon embodies the ideals of perfection Classical Greeks sought from architecture. The neighboring Erechtheion offers something else.
From Æthelred the Unready to Halfdan the Bad Entertainer, these strange epithets colored the legacy of four rather unlucky historical figures.
The volcano’s historic eruption preserved an ancient library, but rendered its content illegible. A public competition aims to change that.
The essential element needed for innovation is creative dissonance — and the keys to unlocking it were forged by bankers in Italy.
Long before the birth of Julius Caesar, the Roman Republic appointed all-powerful dictators to protect their state in times of crisis. They were remarkably self-restrained and obedient to the Roman Constitution.
'Six Persimmons,' an ink painting by the Chinese monk Mu Qi, has long been hailed as the poster child of Zen Buddhism. But is its reputation deserved?
Exile is a kind of death of who you once were.