Johnny Appleseed

The Real Story Behind “Johnny Appleseed”

Johnny Appleseed was based on a real person, John Chapman, who was eccentric enough without the legends.
Catherine Howard

Did Materialism Lead to the Death of a Tudor Queen?

The very things that made Catherine Howard's time as Henry VIII's queen so pleasant became a cudgel with which to beat her.
John Aubrey

Archiving the Inventor of the Archive

Scholarship traces the birth of the archive to natural philosophers like John Aubrey.
Bobby Seale and Cesar Chavez

The Black Panthers’ Unlikely Ally

Cesar Chavez's non-violent United Farm Workers and the militant Black Panthers aligned politically throughout the 60s and 70s.
Battle of Hastings tapestry

The Battle of Hastings and the Ongoing Fight for Britain

Nine hundred and fifty years ago, Normans sailed across the English Channel, landing on England on September 27, 1066. The Norman Conquest had begun.
Polish refugees

Refugees Have Always Made Americans Nervous

What happens when a big stream of refugees enters an American community, bringing their foreign customs and values and taking scarce jobs?
Ford Model T, 1908

Henry Ford’s Anti-Semitism

Henry Ford's newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, published years of anti-Semitic articles, prompting Hitler to call him the "single great man."
Nikita Khrushchev

The Power of Anecdotes in Politics

The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev famously pounded his shoe at a United Nations meeting in 1960. Anecdotes of erratic behavior like this are unsettling.
Strikers fight police in Minneapolis, c. 1934

The Checkered History of Colleges, Unions, and Scabs

In the early twentieth-century, some aristocratic college men were eager to prove their masculinity by working as strikebreakers.
Painting: Dessert No. 4 by  Carducius Plantagene Ream, depicting cake, raspberries, and ice cream

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dessert_No._4_by_Boston_Public_Library.jpg

The First Celebrity Chef

Alexis Soyer frequently cooked for royalty and dignitaries, but also displayed a healthy social conscience.