https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benedictus_Spinoza._Line_engraving_by_W._Pobuda_after_(A._P._Wellcome_V0005578.jpg

Nice Guy Spinoza Finishes…First?

The Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza died in 1677, which is when the battle to define his life—and work—began.
Tiburcio Parrott

Birth of the Corporate Person

The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Arctic circle, Norway

Svalbard: Seeds of Hope

The Arctic archipelago is a bellwether for global climate change, but it also offers a safety net in a planetary disaster scenario.
Flag of the Chinese Empire under the Qing dynasty (1889-1912)

Dragon Swallows the Sun: Predicting Eclipses in China

China had a long history of astronomy before the arrival of Europeans, but the politics of absolute rule led to the eventual embrace of Western methods.
Mbarak Mombée

Mbarak Mombée: An African Explorer Robbed of His Name

Kidnapped and sold into slavery, Mbarak Mombée was critical to the success of the most celebrated nineteenth-century European expeditions in Africa.
Mary Ann Duignan

The Most Dangerous Woman in the World

“Chicago May” was a classic swindler who conned her way around the world in the early twentieth century. She was also a sign of hard times.
Alvin, the Navy research submarine

A Cold War Baby: Happy Birthday, Alvin!

The submersible Alvin is sixty years old this year. Numerous overhauls and upgrades have kept the craft going down (and coming back up!).
J. Robert Oppenheimer

The Annotated Oppenheimer

Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, 1964

Using False Claims to Justify War

Hardly the recent innovation it’s frequently mistakened to be, deception as a path to war has been used by American presidents since the 1800s.
JSTOR Daily Women's History Month Header

Celebrating Women’s History Month

Celebrate Women's History Month all March with JSTOR Daily. We hope you'll find the stories below, and the scholarship they include in full, a valuable resource for classroom or leisure reading.