The white pines of New England may have done more than any leaf of tea to kick off the American Revolution.

Some species go extinct obviously and fast, but just as often, the process can be hard to detect until it’s too late.

By turns worshipped and reviled, the bird frequently associated with death has appeared in art works for thousands of years. Here’s a short history.

The complicated, ever-changing, millennia-long relationship between insects and humans.

The first US bank for women was opened by a fraudster in 1879. It took 40 years for a reputable women’s bank to be founded in Tennessee.

West Germany’s “do no harm” approach to environmental protection—which became known as the precautionary principle—was revolutionary in its time.

Is birdsong music, speech, or something else altogether? The question has raged for millennia, drawing in everyone from St. Augustine to Virginia Woolf.