When Being an Unemployed Teenager was a Crime
Seventeenth-century teenagers faced criminalization for refusing to take on jobs as live-in farm workers, but many pursued their interests despite the threat.
Native Origin Stories As Tools of Conquest
In the nineteenth century, the Euro-American “Lost Tribes of Israel” theory was one of the most popular explanations for the existence of Indigenous peoples.
As Militaries Adopt AI, Hype Becomes a Weapon
Few things provoke quite the same amount of anxiety as the effect AI could have on warfare.
Spanish Colonists were Desperate for European Food
Spanish colonists in the Americas were terrified that their essential humors would change if they ate local food.
How Strong of a Nuclear Bomb Could Humans Make?
The biggest nuclear blast in history came courtesy of Tsar Bomba. We could make something at least 100 times more powerful.
How Sailors Brought the World Home
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sailors gained a knowledge of the world and access to exotic goods unlike anything other non-elites could imagine.
From Weapons to Wildlife?
While war is an environmental as well as human disaster, readiness and preparation for armed conflict is more ambiguous ecologically.
When San Francisco Feminists Rated Mexican Abortions
The California activists played the role of a health agency to ensure women received safe and competent health care in Mexican clinics.
Policing Radicals: Britain vs. the United States
British policing of Communism before and into the Cold War has often been compared favorably with America’s witch-hunt hysteria. But was it really better?
The Nashville Museum of Natural and Artificial Curiosities
Inspired by Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, artist and collector Ralph E. W. Earl founded a similar institution in Tennessee in 1818.