Thomas Jefferson

Making Malt Liquor at Monticello

Thomas Jefferson thought whiskey was harmful to the country. Together with enslaved brewer Peter Hemings, he experimented with making less potent drinks.
A row of British women sitting under hairdryers in a Paris salon

A Short History of Hairdryers

The beauty parlor became a place of sociability for women in the twentieth century, partly aided by modern technology of hair drying.
Cotton plantation

Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton

Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity, explains historian Sven Beckert, helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
William Maclure

A Boatload of Knowledge for New Harmony

Leaders of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences voyaged down the Ohio River in 1825–1826, taking academic education on a journey in search of utopia.
Announcer

How did 1960s Jacksonville Become a Musical Hotspot?

Short answer: crime.
Chicano Brothers Car Club: Photograph of David Aguilar with a 1950 Chevrolet

The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project

The lessons of "low and slow."
Mathilde “Missy” de Morny

The Cross-Dressing Superstar of the Belle Époque

Mathilde de Morny's commitment to a masculine aesthetic and a non-traditional lifestyle in nineteenth-century France challenged the boundaries of gender identity.
Deep Jet Streams in Jupiter's Atmosphere

Could You Stand on the Surface of Jupiter? Exploring the Enigmatic Outer Planets

The outer planets’ clouds hide the weirdness within.
A Hawaiian postcard, 1962

Consuming Hawai‘i’s Golden People

With statehood in 1959 came “Aloha Spirit” tourism, turning Hawai‘i’s ethnic diversity into a commodity that benefited both business and US foreign policy.
Prison Work Crew c. 1929

Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment

Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.