You may have heard of IBM’s chess-playing computer, but Johann Nepomuk Maelzel’s Automaton Chess Player beat Deep Blue to the (mechanical) punch. Check mate.

The sport of competitive walking touched on social concerns such as debt and poverty, fitness and fame, but it also found support in the temperance movement.

Why do we love donning period costumes and re-enacting our history through mock battles, pioneer villages, and Renaissance Faires?

From its nineteenth-century origins, burlesque developed into a self-aware performance art that celebrates the female form and challenges social norms.

Minstrel shows were an American invention, but they also found success in the United Kingdom, where audiences were negotiating their relationships with empire.

In 1960, an ad placed in the New York Times to defend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists touched off a landmark libel suit.