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.
The Schultz House, c. 1889

A Flood of Tourism in Johnstown

Days after a failed dam led to the drowning deaths of more than 2,200 people, the Pennsylvania industrial town was flooded again—with tourists.
The Self-sacrifice of a Father by Jacques Sablet, 1784

The Flour War

In eighteenth-century France, the scarcity and price of flour was the base ingredient for what would become one of history’s bloodiest revolutions.
An illustration of bundling

Bundling: An Old Tradition on New Ground

Common in colonial New England, bundling allowed a suitor to spend a night in bed with his sweetheart—while her parents slept in the next room.
Portrait of James B. Parker

Two William McKinley Autopsies

The 1901 assassination of US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo revealed the abysmal state of race relations in America.