history

Military recruits are supposed to be assessed to see whether they’re fit for service. What happens when they’re not?

The incredible story of a scientist who survived gulags, fighting to change his country and physics.

You’d think we’d be over this fear by now.

Freedom and democracy are great, but our understanding of what those things are has changed a lot since we came up with them.

Why do we celebrate Halloween, and what have pumpkins got to do with it?

This 100-year-old map, originally made for American consumption, highlights the famines that swept across Europe after WWI.

It’s been 100 years since the world’s last deadliest flu pandemic. Experts warn that another one is inevitable, but are we ready?

Saudade: the untranslatable Portuguese word that names the presence of absence and takes melancholy delight in what’s gone.

Andy Thomas, a Missouri-based painter, painted an imaginary image of Trump and past Republican presidents that now hangs in the White House.

Feminism simply means equal rights for men and women.

Novels open us to the nuances of being human.

Flat Earth theory has enjoyed staying power since at least the 19th century despite being patently untrue. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the late Carl Sagan, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and other big thinkers will show you how to disprove this bad idea, all without having to take a journey into space.

Notice anything different? The biggest ideas of the 21st century just got a makeover.

Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union created secret cities to house the scientists working in their nuclear weapons programs. Both nations went about this in very different ways and with very different, sometimes disastrous, results.

History may not repeat but it does rhyme.

The Internet solves another mystery.

Valentine’s Day has a surprisingly raunchy history, going back thousands of years.

What history can teach us about refugees. 

“Anarchy” is often used as a synonym for chaos. Does the historical record match up with that? 

15 million Aztecs were probably killed by a form of salmonella the Spanish brought from Europe.

Debunking the myth that Enlightenment-era pastors opposed modern science.

The fragility of digital memory could let the entire story of our time turn to sand.

The biologist Trofim Lysenko, blamed for millions of deaths, is experiencing a revival in Russia.

This polymath’s papers—full of personal and scientific revelations—have joined the World Register.

Religion influences politics more now than it did 50 years ago. Are we going forward or backward?

Men are barbarians, while women are civilizing. Or at least, that’s how the stereotype goes.    

The one thing both extremes of Left and Right agree on. 

Gulp. Is that you, Santa?

Science gone horribly wrong. This infographic presents inventors where wiped out by their own creations. 

Scientists solve the mystery of an ancient Babylonian tablet, rewriting history. They think the tablet has much to teach us.