How Upper Lips Got Stiff
The truism that “boys don’t cry” is a Western social convention. Colonialism and imperialism made sure it spread East.
Keeping Time with Incense Clocks
As chronicled by Chinese poet Yu Jianwu, the use of fire and smoke for time measurement dates back to at least the sixth century CE.
Charity Scams of Yore
Between the 1850s and 1940s, a charity scam worked a collection circuit of Evangelical Christians in least five hundred towns across eighty countries.
Why Do We Vote by Secret Ballot?
Election days used to be raucous affairs, with individual votes sometimes cast orally for all to hear.
Plant of the Month: Dittany
Did women in the premodern world have much agency over reproduction? Their use of plants like dittany suggests that they did.
Anti-Asian Racism in the 1817 Cholera Pandemic
We should learn from, instead of repeating, the racist assignations of the past.
On the History of the Artificial Womb
Will outside-the-womb gestation, increasingly viable for animal embryos, lead to a feminist utopia? Or to something like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?
Public Dissection Was a Gruesome Spectacle
Renaissance-era anatomists taught people to “knowe thyself” by reading the books of bodies.
Why the French Revolution’s “Rational” Calendar Wasn’t
What ever happened to "the most radical attempt in modern history to challenge the Western standard temporal reference framework?"
Treadmills Were Meant to Be Atonement Machines
America’s favorite piece of workout equipment was developed as a device for forced labor in British prisons. It was banned as cruel and inhumane by 1900.