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Past Imperfect

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White Gold: How Salt Made and Unmade the Turks and Caicos Islands

Turks and Caicos had one of the world’s first, and largest, salt industries

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The Day Henry Clay Refused to Compromise

The Great Pacificator was adept at getting congressmen to reach agreements over slavery. But he was less accommodating when one of his own slaves sued him

William Crockford—identified here as “Crockford the Shark”—sketched by the great British caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson in about 1825. Rowlandson, himself an inveterate gambler who blew his way through a $10.5 million family fortune, knew the former fishmonger before he opened the club that would make his name.

Crockford’s Club: How a Fishmonger Built a Gambling Hall and Bankrupted the British Aristocracy

A working-class Londoner operated the most exclusive gambling club the world has ever seen

A likeness of Madame Restell, published in the National Police Gazette, 1847

Madame Restell: The Abortionist of Fifth Avenue

Without benefit of medical training, Madame Restell spent 40 years as a “female physician”

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The History of Pardoning Turkeys Began With Tad Lincoln

The rambunctious boy had free rein of the White House, and used it to divert a holiday bird from the butcher’s block

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The Early History of Faking War on Film

Early filmmakers faced a dilemma: how to capture the drama of war without getting themselves killed in the process. Their solution: fake the footage

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The Fight that Wouldn’t Stay Fixed

How an apparent misunderstanding led to a brawl that turned into a donnybrook that became a legend

Geronimo as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1898

Geronimo’s Appeal to Theodore Roosevelt

Held captive far longer than his surrender agreement called for, the Apache warrior made his case directly to the president

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Uncovering the Truth Behind the Myth of Pancho Villa, Movie Star

In 1914, the Mexican rebel signed a contract with an American newsreel company that required him to fight for the cameras. Too good to be true? Not entirely

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Women Who Shaped History

The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism

Their seances with the departed launched a mass religious movement—and then one of them confessed that “it was common delusion”

Fox Sisters

“A Very Common Delusion”: Spiritualism and the Fox Sisters

President Gerald Ford in April 1975 with Dick Cheney (left), who would become the youngest White House chief of staff in history, and Donald Rumsfeld, who would become defense secretary.

A Halloween Massacre at the White House

In the fall of 1975 President Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts and a car accident. Then his life got really complicated

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Sophie Blanchard – The High Flying Frenchwoman Who Revealed the Thrill and Danger of Ballooning

Blanchard was said to be afraid of riding in a carriage, but she became one of the great promoters of human flight

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The Traumatic Birth of the Modern (and Vicious) Political Campaign

When Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California in 1934, new media were marshaled to beat him

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Ask Smithsonian 2017

What (or Who) Caused the Great Chicago Fire?

The true story behind the myth of Mrs. O’Leary and her cow

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The Unsolved Mystery of the Tunnels at Baiae

Did ancient priests fool visitors to a sulfurous subterranean stream that they had crossed the River Styx and entered Hades?

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The Silence that Preceded China’s Great Leap into Famine

Mao Zedong encouraged critics of his government—and then betrayed them just when their advice might have prevented a calamity

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The Copper King’s Precipitous Fall

Augustus Heinze dominated the copper fields of Montana, but his family’s scheming on Wall Street set off the Panic of 1907

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The Blazing Career and Mysterious Death of the ‘Swedish Meteor’

Can modern science determine who shot this 18th-century Swedish king?

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The Unknown Story of “The Black Cyclone,” the Cycling Champion Who Broke the Color Barrier

Major Taylor had to brave more than the competition to become one of the most acclaimed cyclists of the world

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