Stuff You Missed in History Class

After the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, the punishment that Japanese forces doled out in China for their part in helping the U.S. was brutal and [Read more]

It’s now a childhood classic, but the modern Crayola crayon has roots in the same company where carbon black was made for car tires at [Read more]

After his daring and impressive escape from slavery, Smalls was considered to be contraband, which was a term used for formerly enslaved people who joined [Read more]

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839. He escaped from enslavement during the U.S. Civil War, in a particularly dramatic [Read more]

The Doolittle Raid was an attack on Japan launched by the U.S. in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. But the leader of the mission was a [Read more]

While Michelangelo’s sculpture of Mary holding the deceased body of Christ is the most famous depiction of that moment in art, that scene has been [Read more]

On May 30, 1948, a flood destroyed Vanport, Oregon. What really makes the story more than a historical footnote is how it tied in to [Read more]

In early modern London, there was a tradition of sorts where apprentices would amass on holidays and physically destroy brothels. One of the largest such [Read more]

Queen Victoria reigned for more than six decades, but her early years as ruler were peppered with a number of disastrous missteps. By participating in [Read more]

The Honey War wasn’t really about honey. It was a dispute over state lines. There are some bee trees in the mix, as well as [Read more]