Amazing Baby Beach and coast on Aruba, Caribbean, white beach with blue ocean tropical beach during summer

Aruba: Black Gold and Boas

What happens when an oil-rich island paradise interrupts its production of petroleum? You may have to visit the Caribbean island of Aruba to find out.
Coronation of a Black Queen on the Day of Kings by Carlos Julião, c. 1770

The Roots of Catholic Samba

Since the early days of African enslavement in Brazil, Black Brazilians have cultivated rituals that mix Catholic and African elements in the form of holy Samba.
A parent and child near windmills at sunset

Black Midwestern Studies: A Reading List

This primer on Black Midwestern Studies examines the factors shaping communities of color in America’s “flyover country,” long mistaken as a place of normative whiteness.
These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.

The Mystery of Mercury’s Missing Meteorites

And how we may have finally found some.
A caricature of the Berners Street Hoax by William Heath, 1810

Is “Swatting” Rooted in a Prank Craze from the 1800s?

Why did Georgian-era England go mad for dangerous hoaxes, and what can that mania tell us about today’s volatile, content-hungry world?
Cover of The Chinese question in Australia, 1878-79

The Chinese Question in Australia

The local British tried to bar Chinese traders from Australian shipping routes. Louis Ah Mouy, Lowe Kong Meng, and Cheong Cheok Hong had something to say about it.
A collage of JSTOR Primary Sources

Lies, Damn Lies, and…Primary Sources?

An instructor shares her approach for teaching students how to evaluate historical materials and claims of veracity made by their originators.
Illustration: Time clocks pop out of a person’s open head.

Brain Time, Mountain Streams, and Rawls the Radical

Well-researched stories from Eos, Black Perspectives, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Cross Reference image

Get Out of Dodge with Cross Reference

This month’s puzzle features a nod to the Second City.
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran sits and talks with American president John F. Kennedy, 1963

The Shah, Our Man in Tehran?

Playing up the threat of the communist incursions, the Shah of Iran gained more and more support—financial and political—from the United States.