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Fourth-grader Lisa Gilvar's Jetsons-inspired bubble-top homes

1970s Children Draw Robot Presidents and Nuclear Apocalypse

Kids predict the darndest things

The deadliest disaster in New York before 9/11 killed many women and children and ultimately erased a German community from the map of Manhattan.

A Spectacle of Horror – The Burning of the General Slocum

The deadliest disaster in New York before 9/11 killed many women and children and ultimately erased a German community from the map of Manhattan

Medical experts inputting data into the electronic library (1981)

One Library for the Entire World

In the years preceding the Internet, futurist books hinted at the massive information infrastructure that was to come

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Imagining a City of Treelike Buildings

Amid growing concerns that skyscrapers were blocking sunlight for people on the ground, a British architect proposed a novel solution

President William Howard Taft and his sons, Robert, right, and Charles Phelps.

When the Country’s Founding Father Is Your Founding Father

The descendants of American presidents are the athletic trainers, lawyers, salesmen and executives of everyday life

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The Mysterious Mr. Zedzed: The Wickedest Man in the World

Sir Basil Zaharoff was the archetypal “merchant of death”—an arms salesman who made a career out of selling to both sides in a conflict

Honeymooners on the moon as imagined by illustrator Arthur Radebaugh (June 1, 1958 Closer Than We Think)

Honeymoon on the Moon

Newlyweds who didn’t want to visit the cliched destination of the time, Niagara Falls, dreamt of one day spending their first days as a couple on the moon

President Ulysses S. Grant with First Lady Julia Dent Grant and son Jesse in 1872.

The Civil War

General Grant in Love and War

The officer who gained glory as a warrior in the Civil War also had a domestic side.

Glamis Castle in the 18th century, shortly before its "mystery" began.

The Monster of Glamis

The secret of Glamis Castle—a concealed room, a hidden heir—was one of the great talking points of the 19th century. But will the mystery ever be resolved?

Top Ten Demonstrations of Love

The inventor, the celebrity and the royal highness couldn’t resist the draw of making a grand gesture to the love of their life

The woman of the year 2030, illustrated by Edward McKnight Kauffer in 1930

Lab-grown Babies in the Year 2030

A 1930 book argued that women’s “liberation from the dangers of childbirth” would be a crucial first step toward gender equality

Headline from the San Antonio Light, November 12, 1933

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die

The plot to kill Michael Malloy for life-insurance money seemed foolproof—until the conspirators actually tried it

Jetpack pilot at Super Bowl I in 1967

The Super Bowl’s Love Affair With Jetpacks

Thankfully, this Super Bowl spectacle never had a wardrobe malfunction

The Venopolis Zoo

Hunting Dinosaurs on Venus

Why bother with cloning and time travel, when your dream safari awaits on a nearby planet?

William L. Shirer, who witnessed a 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremberg, would link the criminality of individuals to communal frenzy.

Revisiting The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Recently reissued, William L. Shirer’s seminal 1960 history of Nazi Germany is still important reading

Today, nearly 1,000 Fayum paintings exist in collections in Egypt and at the Louvre, the British and Petrie museums in London, the Metropolitan and Brooklyn museums, the Getty in California and elsewhere.

The Oldest Modernist Paintings

Two thousand years before Picasso, artists in Egypt painted some of the most arresting portraits in the history of art

2011 Grand Champion orchid: Cycnodes Taiwan Gold.

Objects Of Desire

Chronicling passions that change the world, for good and ill

The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame

The Game that Put the NFL’s Reputation on the Line

In 1930, many football fans believed the college game was better than the professional one

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