American History
Bearing Witness to the Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing
On September 15, 1963, four were killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
Remembering 9/11: Maria Cecilia Benavente's Sandals
Maria Cecilia Benavente escaped Tower Two barefoot; in shock, she held onto her sandals
An Assassin’s Bullet Took Three Years to Kill NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor
Gaynor collapsed and died from a bullet that had been lodged in his throat for three years - put there by an eventually successful assassin
Nobody Knows How to Interpret This Doomsday Stonehenge in Georgia
We know where they are and what they say, but everything else is all hotly debated
A 1928 Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary May Be the First Official Record of “Meh”
The term “meh,” defined as “an expression of indifference or boredom,” entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2008
Obama Isn’t the First Peace Prize Laureate to Support a War
This isn't the first time a Peace Prize winner has pushed for war
This 1970s Underground Bomb Shelter Is Impeccably Designed And For Sale
3970 Spencer St seems pretty normal, until you look more closely that you realize that the trees in the background are fake, and the sky is painted on
How the NSA Stopped Trying to Prevent the Spread of Encryption And Decided to Just Break It Instead
The NSA spent decades trying to stop the spread of encryption technology
See How New Yorkers Celebrated Rosh Hashanah a Century Ago
Photographs from the early 1900s show Rosh Hashanah in New York
Cow Tipping Never Was And Never Will Be a Thing People Actually Do
Scientists have actually taken the time to investigate the idea, and produced some hard numbers that indicated that cow-tipping "has no leg to stand on"
A Reminder From Yosemite’s Massive 1988 Fire: Wildfire Is Largely a Human Problem
This isn't the first time fire has threatened a national park
Why the Smithsonian Just Can’t Quit Studying the Civil War
150 years later, the war is still in focus
What Isaac Asimov Thought 2014 Would Look Like
Past predictions about the future oftentimes fail miserably, but many of Isaac Asimov's futuristic visions were pretty accurate
Why It’s a Big Deal That Fast Food Strikes Have Spread to the South
Fast food workers are asking for more money and to unionize, something that's unusual to see in the South
Saving the Last of the Great Carousels
The ornate, well made carousels of the past are in danger - degrading, being sold piecemeal and sometimes even for parts
Boston Children’s Hospital Once Relied on the Opera to Power X-Rays
In the 1880's the Children's Hospital in Boston didn't have electricity, so it couldn't use X-rays. But the nearby Opera House did
This Interactive Map Compares the New York City of 1836 to Today
Manhattan had a very different topography than the concrete jungle we know today
When the Lincoln Memorial Was Underwater
James Keily’s 1851 map of Washington shows a considerably smaller district, before the Potomac River was filled in to make way for monuments
The U.S. Knew Iraq Was Using Chemical Weapons, Helped Out Anyway
Recently declassified documents detail the CIA's knowledge of Iraq's chemical weapon program in the 1980s
Muriel Siebert, First Woman With a Seat on the Stock Exchange, Dies at Age 80
Siebert bought her seat in 1967, but she remained the only woman on the exchange for almost 10 years after that
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