The Monroe Doctrine’s Checkered Past
This 1823 policy initially focused on preventing European colonization in the Americas. But different U.S. presidents have used it to mean different things.
The Memoirs of Catherine The Great
Catherine II ruled Russia for many years. She also wrote her own memoirs, in a time when such writing was considered inappropriate for a monarch.
Hollywood Froze Out the Founding Mother of Cinema
French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché was the first female film director, and renowned as an innovator in the field. Then she moved to Hollywood.
“Mad Meg,” the Poet-Duchess of 17th Century England
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, shocked the establishment by publishing poems and plays under her own name.
The Strange Story Behind Your Breakfast Cereal
Kellogg's Corn Flakes were originally created by a doctor who believed bland food would reduce people's urge to masturbate.
The Free People of Color of Pre-Civil War New Orleans
Before American concepts of race took hold in the newly-acquired Louisiana, early 19th-century New Orleans had large population of free people of color.
Whitewashing American History
One of the National Park Service's first historic preservation projects, the Colonial National Monument, wrote people of color completely out of the story.
How American Artists Have Portrayed Haiti
In the early 20th century, African American artists created work that expressed solidarity with Haiti--whether they had been there or not.
Racial Violence as Impetus for the Great Migration
Historians traditionally point to economic and social conditions as the primary causes for the Great Migration, but racist hate crimes played a role as well.