The Battle of Mons and the Angels That Followed
The Battle of Mons was one of the earliest battles of World War I. In the months after the battle, stories spread that a supernatural [Read more]
Stuff You Missed in History Class
Suleiman the Magnificent and the Siege of Vienna
The Ottoman Empire’s Suleiman the Magnificent was a head of state, a poet, a reformer of the military and a goldsmith. His reign had a [Read more]
The Great London Smog
London is no stranger to smog, which is why when the Great London Smog descended in December of 1952, nobody quite realized anything unusual was [Read more]
Caroline Herschel: Astronomy’s Cinderella
Herschel managed to break the barrier of women in scientific fields far earlier than you might suspect, in part because of her association with her [Read more]
The Yaa Asantewaa War of Independence
The Asante-British war of 1900 capped about 100 years of war between Great Britain and the Asante Empire, which occupied part of what is now [Read more]
Battle of Poitiers
On Sept. 19, 1356, one of the decisive battles of the Hundred Years War took place in France. It was the first major battle after [Read more]
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Part 2
Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and was one of the Guggenheim Foundation’s judges for its [Read more]
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Part 1
Known as Vincent to family and friends, Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up poor, caring for the household and her sisters while her mother worked. [Read more]
The S.S. Sultana
Because the Sultana sank the day after John Wilkes Booth was captured and killed for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, it didn’t make headline news. [Read more]
Ruth Harkness and the First Panda in the U.S.
In the 1930s a New York socialite had a dream. She wanted to be the first person to capture a panda from Asia and return [Read more]