Jefferson’s Fossils
What can Thomas Jefferson’s mistaken ideas about fossils tell us about science and belief in the early United States?
![A Chelsea Pensioner, wearing a sprig of orange blossom [?] in his buttonhole, sipping a dish of tea. Engraving by J. Jenkins after M. W. Sharp, 1840](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/consuming_the_empire_alt_1050x700-600x400.jpg)
Consuming the Empire
Sugar, tea, and tobacco tied British daily life to empire, turning global exploitation into ordinary habits of consumption.
Love Is Blind … but Are Your Hormones?
Do women’s attraction to certain faces really change across the menstrual cycle? A long-running theory meets modern data.
Dorothy Parker: Sharp-Witted Writer, Bitter Professor
Dorothy Parker’s year as a visiting professor shows how a celebrated literary voice struggled to adapt to the realities of academic teaching.
How Cold War “Orphans” Sang Their Way into American Hearts
Touring choirs helped cast Korean children as ideal adoptees—and Americans as benevolent saviors.
The Nineteenth-Century Science of Fashion
Victorian-era color theory moved from labs and studios into women’s magazines—and into everyday decisions about dress.
Celebrating Black History Month
JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for Black History Month.
The Congo Crisis and the Rise of a Pan-African Musical Politics
How Patrice Lumumba’s assassination reshaped Black internationalism—and pushed musicians toward a new kind of activism.
The Racial Myth of the Basque Sheepherder
How ideas of ancient tradition shaped labor and immigration in the American West.
A History of Existential Anxiety
From medieval theology to modern philosophy, dread has long been a guide for living ethically.