-
+20 +4
Why is Canada naming its warships after U.S. defeats?
Warships from the U.S. Navy will someday be sailing alongside the Royal Canadian Navy supply ships HMCS Queenston and HMCS Chateauguay, perhaps on a NATO exercise or a humanitarian relief mission. That might get awkward if a historically minded American sailor notices that Queenston and Chateauguay are battles where Canada defeated America in the War of 1812. Yo, Canada, what's the deal?
-
+20 +4
Recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell Heard for the First Time
Researchers and scientists work together to find a way to play recordings made by the studio of inventor Alexander Graham Bell
-
+25 +7
Royal pardon for codebreaker Turing
Computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing has been given a posthumous royal pardon.
-
+19 +6
Indonesia cave reveals history of ancient tsunamis
A cave discovered near the source of Indonesia’s massive earthquake-spawned tsunami contains the footprints of past gigantic waves dating up to 7,500 years ago, a rare natural record that suggests the next disaster could be centuries away — or perhaps only decades.
-
+22 +5
102-year-old toy catalog shows what rich children did for fun
FAO Schwarz was founded in 1862, making it the oldest toy retailer in the US. Now, thanks to the Internet Archive, a brochure published in 1911 by the company's New York store — the inspiration for Home Alone 2's Duncan's Toy Chest — has been digitized.
-
+7 +3
5 Reasons 2013 Was Actually 1996 All Over Again
Now is the time of year for all the periodicals across the land to cobble forth their year-end lists of all that year-related shit that happened this year. For example, Highlights: Fun With a Purpose will release a list of "The 26 Most Essential Letters of the Alphabet of 2013." Likewise, The Daily Mail will publish "The 26 Most Important Letters of the Alphabet of 2013," because they'll have simply copy-pasted Highlights, as The Daily Mail knows its audience.
-
+20 +7
How Hitler Tried To Redesign Christmas
In surviving pictures taken by the Führer's own personal photographer, Hitler appears somewhat dour and maybe a little sad to be at this event, as if he feels out of place despite his importance, and no wonder: What holiday could be less suited to the sentiments of that genocidal, warmongering dictator than a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of a Jew?
-
+23 +2
The Iceberg: A Story by Zelda Fitzgerald
In 1918, Zelda Sayre, later Zelda Fitzgerald, won a prize for this story, which she published in the Sidney Lanier High School Literary Journal. She was seventeen or eighteen years old when she wrote it; she would soon meet F. Scott Fitzgerald, her escape hatch from the restrictive world of Montgomery, Alabama, into a tumultuous life of literary striving.
-
+21 +9
The Prophet: Man of Science
Before Proof of Heaven made Dr. Eben Alexander rich and famous as a "man of science" who'd experienced the afterlife, he was something else: a neurosurgeon with a troubled history and a man in need of reinvention
-
+20 +6
Making Up Hollywood
Techniques borrowed from the stage also proved problematic: face paint used to suggest wrinkles to a theater audience, for example, read as tattoos on film. Cinematic makeup, then, was not born from vanity—it was a necessary antidote to the flawed medium of film.
-
+28 +3
How Did People in the Middle Ages Get Rid of Human Waste?
Answer by Tim O'Neill, atheist, medievalist, skeptic, and amateur historian: The idea that people emptied chamberpots out windows into the street is one of the images of the past that has been taught to generations of school children.
-
+21 +4
Who Killed Chris Kyle?
On February 2, 2013, the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history was gunned down at point-blank range, apparently by a troubled soldier he was trying to help. As Eddie Routh heads to trial, we begin to see that there may have been an unwitting accomplice: our broken VA medical system
-
+14 +2
10 Surprising Facts About American Muscle Cars
America loves speed. The 1960s and 1970s might have produced the wildest and rarest muscle cars packing giant torque-rich V-8s, but the 1980s brought its share of powerful machines to the street, too—cars that were quick and met the more stringent emissions controls. And behind the horsepower there are some surprising stories.
-
+15 +2
What’s in the Bag?
The shopping bag isn’t just utilitarian, it’s symbolic of taste, preferences, and pursuits. In his book Living It Up, author James Twitchell compares people holding shopping bags to “the powder on the heinies of migrating bees as they moved from hive to hive.” It’s a souvenir of where you went and a glossy declaration of conspicuous consumption.
-
+12 +3
The War Over Santa Claus
This year, jolly old St. Nicholas has been white, black, Jewish, and even a penguin. But what's the real story?
-
+17 +6
Believing you're God doesn't make you too crazy to be executed
The cowboy who tried to subpoena Jesus and six other killers with delusions of divinity.
-
+25 +3
The Lives They Lived
The New York Times Magazine’s annual celebration of public and private lives, and of the moments — intimate, historic, unexpected — that shaped them.
-
+27 +2
10 truly bizarre Victorian deaths
Life in Victorian times was arguably considerably more dangerous than now, if the newspaper reports of the time are anything to go by, writes Jeremy Clay.
-
+19 +6
My Mao, on His Hundred-and-Twentieth Birthday
If my grandfather thought Mao was our savior, my father took equal pleasure in the qualities that made him mortal.
-
+14 +3
Local courts reviving 'debtors' prison' for overdue fines, fees
As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.
Submit a link
Start a discussion