The study of Melville’s novel is enhanced by contextualizing it with primary and secondary sources related to the American sperm whaling industry.

In its heyday, lace was beautiful, expensive, and handmade. Naturally, lace smuggling became the stuff of legend.

Throughout the history of philosophy, literature, art, and science, people have been fascinated with the shimmering surfaces of soap bubbles.

They’re big in elementary school, but unicorn tableaux also have a complex iconographic history that combines religious and secular myths.

The slightly disgusting secret ingredient that has historically made food dye, lipstick, and even the cloaks of Roman Catholic cardinals so vibrant.

The famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright famously loathed commercialism, and yet he (reluctantly) designed commercial homewares to be mass-produced.

Renaissance-era anatomists taught people to “knowe thyself” by reading the books of bodies.

Design can facilitate the worst of human instincts, including forcing animals into servitude and violence. Cricket cages tell stories about how people have treated the insects throughout time.

In Europe between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, fireworks displays were performances that told a story or symbolized real-world battles.

New research scans three Viking swords and finds that, while well-made, they were not strong enough to withstand a fight.