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Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Tampa Florida, 2011

Reasons for Re-Enacting at the Renaissance Faire

Why do we love donning period costumes and re-enacting our history through mock battles, pioneer villages, and Renaissance Faires?

Archive Adventures

A collage of photographs by Doris Ulmann

The “Vanishing Types” of Doris Ulmann

As her extensive body of work shows, Ulmann felt the loss of an imagined simpler time and tried to preserve it with her camera.

Shared Collections

Can You Photograph a Ghost?

William Hope claimed to be able to document the visitations of ghosts. The controversial images he produced add to our understanding of the history of photography.

Read Before You Go

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barnhill_from_above_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2230480.jpg

Jura: George Orwell’s Scottish Hideaway

Discover the austere island retreat where Big Brother was born.

Plant of the Month

A cluster of Azolla filiculoides plants.

Azolla filiculoides: Balancing Environmental Promise and Peril

One of the world’s tiniest fern species, Azolla filiculoides may be one of our greatest tools for lowering agricultural pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Most Recent

Flying Horse Of Gansu. Eastern Han dynasty, 25 - 220 AD.

The Supernatural Horses That Fascinated Chinese Emperors

In the second century BCE, Han Dynasty Emperor Wu so desired a herd of “blood-sweating” horses from Central Asia that he was willing to wage war over them.
Three angels hosted by Abraham, Ludovico Carracci, c. 1610-1612

Xenophilia: Golden Rule of the Stranger

We may have heard enough about xenophobia, the fear of the stranger. But what of its opposite, the love for a stranger, better known as hospitality?

More Stories

Archive Adventures

A collage of photographs by Doris Ulmann

The “Vanishing Types” of Doris Ulmann

As her extensive body of work shows, Ulmann felt the loss of an imagined simpler time and tried to preserve it with her camera.

Shared Collections

Can You Photograph a Ghost?

William Hope claimed to be able to document the visitations of ghosts. The controversial images he produced add to our understanding of the history of photography.

Read Before You Go

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barnhill_from_above_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2230480.jpg

Jura: George Orwell’s Scottish Hideaway

Discover the austere island retreat where Big Brother was born.

Plant of the Month

A cluster of Azolla filiculoides plants.

Azolla filiculoides: Balancing Environmental Promise and Peril

One of the world’s tiniest fern species, Azolla filiculoides may be one of our greatest tools for lowering agricultural pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Long Reads

Crowd entering the stadium at the 1896 Olympic marathon

The Invention of the Marathon

The Hellenic inspiration for the 26.2-mile races which draw over a million runners yearly worldwide had nothing to do with sport—but everything to do with war.

Portico’s Part in Telling the Story of Emmett Till

The Emmett Till Memory Project teaches new generations about the tragedy that kickstarted the Civil Rights Movement. Preserving its digital assets is vital.
Native American midwives weighing a crying Native Amerian child on a set of scales in the hospital at the Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, circa 1945

Call the Midwives—Assuming Any Are Left

While midwife-attended deliveries are the norm in the United Kingdom, they’re the exception in the United States. Time was, this difference wasn’t so stark.
Poster for the film The Deadly Mantis, 1957

The War on Bugs

In the 1950s, supersized insects were the villains in a rash of big-screen horror movies. What did those monstrous roaches represent, and how were they vanquished?

Huxley approached the drug with the curiosity of an intellectual and the calculation of a scholar.

When Aldous Huxley Dropped Acid

Doing Math with Intellectual Humility

Math class is an opportunity to teach students both how to use conjecture to arrive at knowledge and how to learn from the logic of peers.
Photo taken in the Bourbaki Congress of 1938 in Dieulefit

The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki

Bourbaki was gnomic and mythical, impossible to pin down; his mathematics just the opposite: unified, unambiguous, free of human idiosyncrasy.
Karate chop

The Physics of Karate

A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn't shatter our bones.