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History

As part of her cover, Frances Clayton took up gambling, cigar-smoking and swearing.

Covert Force

Hundreds of women fought in the civil war disguised as men

George Silk

Clutch Shot Clinches Fall Classic

Owens River, Sierra Nevada

California Scheming

Los Angeles’ insatiable thirst for water, which drained the Owens Valley, has ruined lives, shaped the city’s politics and provoked ongoing controversy

Born in Kenya in 1903 to Anglican missionaries, Louis Leakey (in his mother's arms outside the family's mud and thatch house) was initiated as a youth into the Kikuyu tribe. "I still often think in Kikuyu, dream in Kikuyu," he wrote in a 1937 autobiography.

The Old Man of Olduvai Gorge

Irrepressible Louis Leakey, patriarch of the fossil-hunting family, championed the search for human origins in Africa, attracting criticism and praise

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet warheads on Cuban soil could have attacked many major U.S. cities.

Learning from the Missile Crisis

What Really Happened on Those Thirteen Fateful Days in October

A doctor before she became an educator, Maria Montessori developed strategies and materials that, a century later, are being adopted by more and more classrooms (such as this one in Landover, Maryland).

Madam Montessori

Fifty years after her death, innovative Italian educator Maria Montessori still gets high marks

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Uncommon Valor

When two Naval officers entered the inferno of the Pentagon’s west flank to search for survivors, they put their own lives on the line

In the 1970s, Joe transformed into Atomic Man, a bionic bruiser whose fearlessness extended to cobras.

Macho in Miniature

For nearly 40 years, G.I. Joe has been on America’s front lines in toy boxes from coast to coast

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They Turned the Tide

Members of the Doolittle Raiders celebrate the 60th anniversary of the U.S. answer to pearl harbor

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Latino Legacies

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Joyous View

A biographer and his subject, William Clark, meet in St. Louis

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Iron Will

While William Clark is best known for the expedition he made with Meriwether Lewis, his later life was as historic and more consequential

Presley in a Sun Records promotional photograph, 1954

Boy Wonder

For a few fleeting moments in 1956, Elvis Presley was still an unaffected kid from Tupelo, Mississippi, and the road to stardom seemed paved in possibility

Amphitheater excavations uncovered a set of fancifully carved bone flutes.

First City in the New World?

Peru’s Caral suggests civilization emerged in the Americas 1,000 years earlier than experts believed

Dr. John Gorrie

Chilly Reception

Dr. John Gorrie found the competition all fired up when he tried to market his ice-making machine

Old Patent Office Building, ca. 1846

A Pantheon After All

There’s no more fitting venue for American initiative and American art than the old Patent Office building

One of the most striking arrays of Neolithic monuments in Britain, the Ring of Brodgar is on the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. Dating from about 2500 B.C., the ring's stones form a perfect circle 340 feet in diameter. (The tallest of the surviving stones is 14 feet high.) A ditch surrounding the ring, dug out of bedrock, is 33 feet wide and 11 feet deep. Archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who partially excavated the site in 1973, estimates the ditch would have required 80,000 man-hours to dig.

Romancing the Stones

Who built the great megaliths and stone circles of Great Britain, and why? Researchers continue to puzzle and marvel over these age-old questions

A year after the eruption, the effects were felt in the northeastern United States, where vital corn crops withered from killing frosts.

Blast from the Past

The eruption of Mount Tambora killed thousands, plunged much of the world into a frightful chill and offers lessons for today

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Kon Artist?

Though evidence against his theory grew, Kon-Tiki sailor Thor Heyerdahl never steered from his course

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Old House, New Home

For 200 years in Ipswich, it sheltered all manner of Americans; now it informs and delights them

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