Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin and His Correspondents: A Lifetime of Letters

An epistolary network was critical for Darwin’s work, allowing him to obtain new information while sparking fresh ideas in his correspondents’ minds.
Garrett Hongo

I Hear America Singing

Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples.
Editorial cartoon by William C. Morris, c. 1906

A People’s Bank at the Post Office

The Postal Savings System offered depositors a US government-backed guarantee of security, but it was undone by for-profit private banks.
London Planetrees

London Planetrees, Moon Time, and Dunning-Kruger

The best stories from Slate, Sapiens, and other research-backed publications around the web.
Tabula Indiae Orientalis et Regnorum adjacentium.

Culinary Fusion in the Ancient World

People from eastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have been sharing food plants across the Indian Ocean for millennia.
A photo postcard of a French woman by Lucien Waléry

Postcards Revolutionized Pornography 

In the late nineteenth century, the postcard became the ideal medium for expanding the audience for pornography, much to the concern of social elites.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters glue themselves to barrels outside the Treasury on April 07, 2022 in London, England.

Who Can Just Stop Oil?

Groups such as Just Stop Oil are calling for change, but their aims need to be considered with respect to more than a reductionist slogan.
Vintage engraving showing police officers transporting prisoners in to the London Police Courts

The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Policing

The increased use of machines and the division of labor allowed for the production of standardized products. It also made it easier to fence stolen goods.
A Spectro-Chrome, c. 1925

Colorful Lights to Cure What Ails You

Between 1920 and the 1960s, tens of thousands of people received treatment with a Spectro-Chrome to address various ailments.
Children with their Indian nanny at St Ann's Well in the spa town of Buxton, Derbyshire, August 1922.

Ayahs Abroad: Colonial Nannies Cross The Empire

South Asian maids and nannies journeyed to Britain by the thousands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with returning colonials.