The president’s plan to abolish slavery hinged on winning a second term — and receiving a long, expensive telegram that almost didn’t make it.
Ainissa Ramirez | May 6, 2020
After bungling the 1890 census in San Francisco, economist Carl Plehn was tapped to run the Red Cross’s registration department in the wake of the city’s tragic earthquake.
Megan Finn | Apr 27, 2020
The Vietnam War proved instrumental in sparking a new level of awareness regarding mental health in times of crises. What might it teach us about our own?
Lucas Richert | Apr 16, 2020
In 2001, postal workers, for a brief moment, had a chance to reorganize how postal policy operated. But their health and safety was traded away in favor of cheap and fast mail.
Ryan Ellis | Apr 13, 2020
Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil offers a sweeping look at pandemics that ravaged the world.
Vaclav Smil | Mar 30, 2020
Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil meticulously charts one of the single largest causes of non-natural mortality.
Vaclav Smil | Mar 27, 2020
Lin Yutang's MingKwai typewriter is perhaps the most well-known — and most poorly understood — Chinese typewriter in history.
Thomas Mullaney | Mar 12, 2020
A harbinger of the ways in which modern life would become dominated by mechanical motion, the bicycle was a fitting subject for the first motion picture.
Bruce Bennett | Feb 13, 2020
Prohibitionists around the world have long used rhetoric to associate the plant with violence and depravity.
Ryan Stoa | Jan 23, 2020
Sherry Zane sheds light on a dark covert operation that targeted homosexual Navy men.
The Editors | Jan 20, 2020
