Our neighboring solar system is an odd one by any measure. It’s a triple system consisting of Alpha Centauri A, which is about 10 percent more massive than our Sun and 50 percent more luminous, and ...

The horror films of the 1970s captured a cultural shift from fears of institutional abuse to anxieties about psychiatric ...

Q: What’s more than a mile deep, 400 miles long, and holds 20% of all of the Earth’s fresh surface water? A: Lake Baikal, which is a huge body of water located in a remote corner of southeastern ...

Until the early twentieth century, medical schools in the United States resembled today’s for-profit colleges, both in quality and reputation. There were no common standards for curriculum or ...

Middle-aged performers are taking on roles once reserved for men, challenging expectations about age and gender in Bali.

While most common in the nineteenth century, the practice of “telling the bees” about significant life events endures, albeit in a different form, to the present day. The most pervasive and affecting ...

Sir Robert Peel is popularly credited with the formation of the first modern municipal police force, founded in London, in 1829. Before him, what passed for policing was really a hodge-podge of ...

What happened when the Beat Generation bumped up against the popular culture they were rebelling against? Historian Stephen Petrus writes about how the youth subculture was turned into a commodity.

In the middle of a green Irish field stands a bizarre structure: not so much a building as a collection of holes, a series of gaping arches framing the sky. This is Conolly’s Folly, built in 1740 at ...

In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, Americans heard different things depending on their ideological predispositions, and perhaps to some extent we still do. After all, this summer many of us will ...

We all know that Coca-Cola once contained cocaine. But why? And why did they take it out? As Michael M. Cohen writes, the answer is all about the way authorities perceive drugs differently depending ...

Do you thrift? If so, you’re not alone—according to the Association of Retail Professionals, about 16 to 18 percent of Americans shop at thrift stores in any given year. But how did the thrift store ...