Plaster face casts by Anna Coleman Ladd

How Masks of Mutilated WWI Soldiers Haunted Postwar Culture

In the age before plastic surgery, masks were the best option for veterans with faces scarred by war. The end results, however, were somewhat uncanny.
The Eldorado Nightclub

Gender Identity in Weimar Germany

Remembering an early academic effort to define sexual orientation and gender identity as variable natural phenomena, rather than moral matters.
The dedication ceremony of the Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India.

The New Meaning of Monuments

Huge monuments to national pride are regaining popularity. One scholar suggests this might also indicate a larger cultural shift.
Building Colonies for WW1 Veterans

Building Colonies for WWI Veterans

After World War I, policymakers seriously considered the idea of setting up farming colonies for returning veterans.
A contraption used to extract the silk from a spider

The Tangled History of Weaving with Spider Silk

Spider silk is as strong as steel and as light as a feather, but attempts to industrialize its production have gotten stuck, so to speak.
Illustrated portrait of Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina Tereshkova and the American Imagination

Remembering the Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and how she challenged American stereotypes.
selling great britain to texas

The Plan to Sell Texas to Great Britain

Stephen Pearl Andrews, a lawyer, Houston socialite, and abolitionist, concocted a plan to free Texas' slaves—with a hint of treason.
Lakeport Plantation, c. 1859 and built south of Lake Village, is the only remaining antebellum plantation house on the Mississippi River in Arkansas.

How the Enslaved People of Arkansas Fought Back

Though there was never a unified uprising that made it into the history books, the enslaved people of Arkansas rebelled and resisted in significant ways.
Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai toast during Nixon's 1972 visit to China

How Nixon Paved the Way for Trump

Richard Nixon's voters had a lot in common with Trump's, especially in their idealization of the self-sufficient, independent American businessperson.
U.S. President Donald Trump (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) meet in Hamburg, Germany in July 2017.

Can the US and China Avoid the Thucydides Trap?

The "Thucydides trap" refers to the theory that when a rising power threatens a ruling power, the result is often war. Are the US and China headed there?