History

Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man by Mark Kurlansky, available through booksellers on May 8

Clarence Birdseye, the Man Behind Modern Frozen Food

I spoke with author Mark Kurlansky about the quirky inventor who changed the way we eat

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Edible Dictionary: Microbial Mothers

Why are the lees at the bottom of a wine or cider barrel named for your female parent?

Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen are the stars of HBO's fictionalization of the relationship between Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway.

Danger and Romance from HBO’s “Hemingway & Gellhorn”

A new made-for-television movie airing May 28 recounts the stormy love affair between the writer and the war correspondent

The microstructure of Smets' "dinosaur" revealed the fossils to be petrified wood.

The Demise of a Wooden Dinosaur

A Victorian-era naturalist thought he'd found a new kind of dinosaur, and he threw a fit when other naturalists disagreed

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Was America Named for a Pickle Dealer?

Amerigo Vespucci wasn't entirely heroic—just ask Ralph Waldo Emerson

A public drinking fountain in Rome

Making Water Use Visible

Could the design of a Brita filter help us with controlling how much water we waste?

These cyclists are enjoying another day on the trail in the Crocodile Trophy, in northeastern Australia, considered one of the most punishing bicycle races in the world.

Grueling Travel through Beautiful Places: the Madness of Extreme Races

The Crocodile Trophy mountain biking race is off-road, meaning gravel, rocks, ruts, puddles, dust and lots of crashing

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The Shangri-La of Health Food

A view from the train on the way to Tibet

All Aboard the Beijing-Lhasa Express

The writer casts aside concerns about comfort and political correctness to take the rail trip of a lifetime

Peanuts

The Legumes of War: How Peanuts Fed the Confederacy

Food shortages were a problem for both military and civilians. But even in these hard times, people could find relief in peanuts

Hydrologic Commonwealths for the American West, proposed by John Wesley Powell, 1879

Design for a Water-Scarce Future

Design strategies for arid regions go back centuries, but in the face of climate change, drylands design is a whole new ballgame

Camarasaurus, as envisioned by Erwin Christman

Wading With Sauropods

Before the Dinosaur Renaissance moved sauropods out of the swamps, paleontologists recognized that some of these dinosaurs were better suited to land

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Where Did Katniss Get Its Name?

The tuber that gave its name to the heroine of the Hunger Games books has its roots in an era when European explorers met native Americans

The original AMNH mount of Brontosaurus, reconstructed in 1905

Why Brontosaurus Still Matters

Though it never actually existed, Brontosaurus is an icon of just how much dinosaurs have changed during the past century

The Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota

The Stories Behind Five Famous Advertising Characters

Inspired by the Sriracha Flamethrower Grizzly, a look back at some of the great icons of food branding

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Fiddlehead Ferns: How Dangerous is the First Taste of Spring?

The French botanist named 6,700 species in a manic quest for fame. But did his taste for wild foods do him in?

Starchy staple of the tropics, the breadfruit is often fried or baked and eaten like potatoes.

Exotic Fruits to Eat Locally When Traveling Globally

The crimson fruits occur by the millions, and fishermen, tequila-sipping cowboys, and even a few tourists take to the desert to pursue the pitahaya

Huntley and Palmers biscuit tins that were found in Antarctica.

The Art of the Biscuit Tin

Double-baked biscuits with a long shelf life were the food of choice for European travelers, and the tins they were packaged in are now collector's items

El Capitan, as seen here from the floor of Yosemite Valley, was once considered almost unclimbable.

A Short Talk With a Legend of Rock

"Climbing without risk isn't climbing," says Yvon Chouinard, American rock climbing pioneer and founder of Patagonia

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Making Noise and Selling Ice Cream

Put the bumpy, sour, off-key sound of a mobile ice cream vendor on repeat and play it loud, and you've got an infectious earworm

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