Boycotting Captain Boycott
There were boycotts before the word was coined in the 1880s, but ever since then they’ve always been called after the experience of Captain Charles Boycott.
Before Blogs, There Were Zines
Zines haven’t completely disappeared in the internet age, but the photocopier-powered DIY publishing phenomenon has certainly entered history by now.
Why We Still Love The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone stood out in the “vast wasteland” of television in the early 1960s and still resonates today.
Poisoning like the Romans
The Romans certainly have a reputation for using poisons, but what do we really know about this form of assassination in the classical era?
The Completely True History of April Fools’ Day
The door to spring is guarded by fools, but that’s ok, because they’re not all that serious. And everybody knows the password: April Fools!
Should We Thank Frig it’s Friday?
The Anglo-Saxon goddess Frig has often been cited as the origin of the word Friday, but one scholar questions whether such a deity ever existed.
The Evolution of the Microscope
The first compound microscopes date to 1590, but it was the Dutch Antony Van Leeuwenhoek in the mid-seventeenth century who first used them to make discoveries.
Alaska’s Unique Civil Rights Struggle
A generation before Rosa Parks, a young Eskimo-American woman was arrested for sitting in the “whites only” section of a Nome, Alaska move theater.
What Do We Really Know About Joseph Stalin?
It took three more decades of Soviet rule before the archives dealing with Stalin and his times could be explored. And then the doors were shut again.
The High School Hair Wars of the 1960s
Following the introduction of the mop top by the Beatles, the battle over how long school boys could wear their hair in the 1960s and 1970s went to the courts again and again.
