Dates Hanging from Date Palm

Dates: Civilization’s Sweetest Indulgence

Offshoots from the “Tree of Life” traveled from Mesopotamia to the Levant to the United States, beguiling everyone with their toothsome confections.
Illustration from a poster of the first issue stamp celebrating the Mendez v. Westminster School District case

Mendez v. Westminster and Mexican American Desegregation

International relations and foreign influence helped end legal segregation of Mexican American students in California after World War II.
A Soviet poster from 1919

Convincing Peasants to Fly in the Soviet Union

With air-minded films, poems, and demonstrations, Soviet leaders sought to lift peasants out of their “backward” lives and into the world of the modern proletariat.
Wild timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) on train tacks at sunrise, Florida

Actual American Rattlesnakes

Historians are recovering the overlooked history of North America’s Crotalus horridus, the timber rattlesnake.
President Truman addresses the closing session of the 38th annual conference of the NAACP at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., 1947

Why Did Truman Support Civil Rights?

Truman’s domestic agenda attempted to solve the problem of Black American oppression while undermining the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Plaque of Marbury v. Madison at SCOTUS Building

Marbury v. Madison: Annotated

Justice John Marshall’s ruling on Marbury v. Madison gave the courts the right to declare acts and laws of the legislative and executive branches unconstitutional.
A view of the New United States embassy in London, England. Circa 1950.

Whatever Happened to London’s “Little America”?

Since the time of John Adams, the first US Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Grosvenor Square has been the locus of the American government in Britain.
The golden death mask of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen, 1950

The Pharaoh’s Curse or the Pharaoh’s Cure?

A toxic fungus from King Tutankhamun’s tomb yields cancer-fighting compounds.
Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ca. 1900-1915

Take Me Out to the Class Game: Social Stratification in the Stadium

The private boxes for the privileged few in today’s baseball stadiums are nothing new.
A painting of The Belgic, the ship on which Ella Sheldon wrote many of her diaries.

Lonely Diarist of the High Seas

As ship stewardess, Ella Sheldon tended to upper-crust women onboard and battled a range of workplace demons. Her journals tell her story.