Which Flowers Bloom First and Why?
A massive collection of dried flower specimens demonstrates that climate change disrupts the timing of spring blooms.
RV144: The Largest HIV Vaccine Trial in History
One of the biggest advances in AIDS vaccine research was a controversial, landmark treatment that tested a new vaccine on 16,000 Thai volunteers.
What Is Jazz Poetry?
The form flourished in the 1950s, as poets and musicians inspired each other to new heights.
The Origins of the Mug Shot
US police departments began taking photographs of people they arrested in the 1850s.
Can Thucydides Teach Us Why We Go to War?
A contemporary scholar uses the ancient Greek historian to explain the 1968 Pueblo Crisis in North Korea.
The Myth of Manifest Destiny
Not everyone in the nineteenth century was on board with expanding the territory of the US from coast to coast.
Policing Intersex Americans’ Sex and Gender
Assigning one sex to people with ambiguous genitalia has a long history in medicine and law.
Chivalric Romance, Meet Gunpowder Reality
The manly knight wouldn't have lasted a day in sixteenth-century combat. So why was he so popular as a literary figure at the time?
The Dogs of North America
Dogs were prolific hunters and warm companions for northeastern Native peoples like the Mi'kmaq.
The Newsletter Boom, 300 Years before Substack
Some journalists are turning to newsletters to get their work out. But they're not hand-copying them onto folded paper, like people did in the 1600s.