Burke and Hare infamously killed people to meet the demand for bodies in Edinburgh’s anatomy schools in 1828. But who remembers the man for whom they worked?

Algeria was a safety valve for the Second Republic: a place to funnel the militant working class to subdue them as colonists and farmers.

In the early twentieth century, hostel organizations helped young people to get out into the country and travel independently—with a bit of overnight supervision.

The history of garbage dumps is the history of America.

An exiled French aristocrat who wrote in German and explored California in the name of Russia, von Chassimo inspired Marx, Offenbach, and even Wilde.

The novels of Ma Ma Lay and Wendy Law-Yone challenge the limits placed on the voices of Burmese women in the twentieth century.

Asteroid collisions aren't always bad.

"Except as punishment for a crime," reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.

In 1710, Queen Anne of England feted four Native American dignitaries—would-be political allies. Their presence at a performance of Macbeth caused a stir.

The pseudoscience phrenology swept the popular imagination, and its practitioners made a mint preying on prejudices, gullibility, and misinformation.