Bowl from 12th century Egypt

How Medieval Arabic Literature Viewed Lesbians

As far back as the ninth century, doctors and poets wrote about women who loved women without calling them deviants.
Usnea antarctica

The Unsung Heroine of Lichenology

Elke Mackenzie’s moments of self-citation illuminate the hopes of someone who, against ease and tradition, did not wish to separate her identity from her research.
Alien in a car at Baker, San Bernardino County, California, USA

Our Space Brothers Might Not Actually Look Like Little Green Men after All

If we find aliens, chances are they'll be nothing like we ever imagined.
The Bobcat Fire burns through the Angeles National Forest on September 11, 2020 north of Monrovia, California.

A Recipe for Ancient Wildfires

The earliest wildfires raged long before humans, and they only needed three ingredients to get started.
Marilyn Monroe at Hollywood agent Johnny Hyde's backyard, 1950

How Hollywood Sold Glamour

The complicated notion of glamour in classic Hollywood, suggesting that stars were aloof and unknowable, was also a means to sell products.
Mothers' Crusade for Victory over Communism

The Red Scare and Women in Government

In 1952, a government administrator named Mary Dublin Keyserling was accused of being a communist. The attack on her was also an attack on feminism.
Sugar Skulls

What Do Sugar Skulls Mean on El Día de los Muertos?

The iconography of Mexico's Día de los Muertos has become wildly popular outside Latino communities. But where did the skulls and skeletons come from?
Amphibian attack of spanish-tlaxcallan force

How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics

Colonial exploitation made the indigenous Aztec people disproportionately vulnerable to epidemics. Indigenous accounts show their perspective.
Botanical manuscript of 450 watercolors of flowers and plants

Plant of the Month: Dittany

Did women in the premodern world have much agency over reproduction? Their use of plants like dittany suggests that they did.
Four top pickers holding barrels of beans. Morrisvile. 1943.

The Brooklyn College Farm Labor Project of the 1940s

The coronavirus pandemic left farmers falling back on students to pick crops. But it certainly wasn’t the first time.