What Was Behind Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal?
Swift’s savage animosity towards the Irish Protestant elites is front and center in his biting (perhaps literally) critique of the landlord class.
The Surprising Imperial History of the Pekingese Dog
Upper-class British women in the early 1900s participated in a craze for Pekingese dogs, signalling the role of empire in their social identities.
Green Sickness, the Disease of Virgins
In the mid-seventeenth century, John Graunt, the “father of English statistics,” claimed dozens of young women in London died of green sickness every year.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Scuba Adventures and Ocean Frontiers
Clarke’s interest in oceanic exploration in the 1950s was, like his undersea fiction, often neglected by an audience focused on the race for outer space.
“Declaration of Sentiments”: Annotated
The document that came out of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention extended the long-lived and hard-fought movement for women’s rights in the United States.
A Massive Eruption 74,000 Years Ago Affected the Whole Planet
Archaeologists use volcanic glass to figure out how people survived.
Papering Over History
Efka—the German rolling paper company—was a Nazi regime favorite. After World War II, it was refashioned as a darling of the pot-infused counterculture.
The Bowling Alley: It’s a Woman’s World
Even when it was considered socially unacceptable, American women were knocking down pins on the local lanes.
Miners and Monkeys
There were compensations for the hardscrabble life of the Gold Rush—like monkeys and parrots brought to California for companionship and entertainment.
Ford Country…in Rural Essex?
Between 1931 and 1947, Henry Ford financed an experimental farm in Essex to see if industrial American farming methods could be applied to British fields.