The Haitian Revolution and American Slavery
For both US politicians and enslaved Black Americans, the Haitian Revolution represented the possibility of a successful violent rebellion by the oppressed.
Do You Own Your Body?
The idea that our bodies are our own may be intuitive, but when it comes to market transactions like surrogacy, our beliefs and feelings get more complicated.
Anaxagoras and the Eclipse: The First to Get It Right
Scholars sometimes credit Thales or Empedocles of Acragas with the first correct theory of solar eclipses, but it was Anaxagoras who had the science right.
Why Some Spartan Women Had Two Husbands
In ancient Sparta, it was accepted practice for more women to marry and have children by more than one man.
Nuremberg: City of Dreams and Nightmares
From a mercantile powerhouse in the Middle Ages to a stage for genocidal horror in the twentieth century, Nuremberg has played a pivotal role in German history.
A Fresh Hell (Chicken)
A newly identified “Hell chicken” species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit.
Birth of A National Immigration Policy
Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.
Historian J.T. Roane Explores Black Ecologies
Considerations of climate change and environmentalism have for too long paid no mind to where Black people live and in what conditions.
As You Lakh It
How did an oleoresin produced by insects in Asia become a standard part of European furniture manufacture and conservation?
Wormholes, Baitfish, and Neo-Medievalism
Well-researched stories from Slate, Literary Hub, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.