The Lavender Scare
In 1950, the U.S. State Department fired 91 employees because they were homosexual or suspected of being homosexual.
Ch’arki: The First Jerky
Ch'arki is made in the high-altitude Andes by alternately drying the meat in the hot sun and freezing it during the cold nights.
The X-ray Craze of 1896
For many science-obsessed Victorians, X-rays were not just a fun novelty, but a potential miracle cure.
In the McCarthy Era, to Be Black Was to Be Red
The Marxist sympathies of Black radical leaders like Paul Robeson, Alice Childress, and Lorraine Hansberry made them targets for the FBI.
The Origins of the Police
Sir Robert Peel is popularly credited with the formation of the first modern municipal police force. But the Thames River Police did it first.
What the Reconstruction Meant for Women
Southern legal codes included parallel language pairing “master and slave” and “husband and wife.”
How Native Americans Came to Fight Southwestern Fires
The practice began with the 1933 creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and, specifically, its Indian Division.
The Bizarre Social History of Beds
For centuries, people thought nothing of crowding family members or friends into the same bed.
The East India Company Invented Corporate Lobbying
The historian William Dalyrmple's new book, The Anarchy, indicts the East India Company for "the supreme act of corporate violence in world history."