Will the U.S. Ever Catch a High-Speed Train?
Over 20 countries have high-speed train travel, carrying 1.6 billion passengers a year. The United States is lagging behind.
Should Museums Display Shrunken Heads?
Tsantsas, or shrunken human heads, remind us of how museums have often been founded on a violent trade in indigenous culture.
Brazil’s Maroon State
For nearly a century, Quilombo of Palmares was an Afro-Brazilian state, populated and run by people who had freed themselves from slavery.
The Amoral Scientist
Fritz Haber was a chemist who made discoveries that improved global agriculture… but also helped spawn the modern era of chemical warfare.
The Trouble with Absinthe
When temperance advocates won the ban on absinthe in 1915, many of them saw it as the first step in a broader anti-drinking campaign.
Anthropologists Hid African Same-Sex Relationships
Sex between people of the same gender has existed for millennia. But anthropologists in sub-Saharan Africa often ignored or distorted those relationships.
The Movable Tent Cities of the Ottoman Empire
The most lavish among them were festooned with colorful appliqué and brightened with gilded leather.
Why Cheerfulness Mattered in the Antarctica Expedition of 1912
Often associated with stoic masculinity, Robert Falcon Scott's British Antarctic Expedition was in fact defined by cheerfulness and friendly homemaking.
When Germany Called its Soldiers Hysterical
After WWI, German psychiatrists diagnosed traumatized soldiers as having "hysteria," othering the men to somewhat disastrous effect.
The Weather Forecast That Saved D-Day
Operation Overlord launched the invasion of German-occupied Europe during WWII. But the right weather, tides, and moonlight were essential for it to work.