Stuff You Missed in History Class

Laura Bridgman was the first deafblind person to be educated — a feat accomplished by Samuel Gridley Howe in the 1830s. People from around the [Read more]

In 1857 Nikola Tesla began work on direct current motor issues. In 1884, he approached Thomas Edison with ideas about alternating current, but Edison championed [Read more]

P.T. Barnum worked with many performers. Perhaps the most famous was the diminutive General Tom Thumb. Barnum also promoted Swedish singer Jenny Lind, but his [Read more]

Operation Mincemeat aimed to relay false information to the Nazis by dropping a corpse where they would find it, along with fake documents. The British [Read more]

The Pulitzer-winning play “Clybourne Park” took inspiration from Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin the Sun.” In this episode, we talk to Clybourne Park’s Tony-nominated director Pam [Read more]

P.T. Barnum is best known as a circus man, but he spent most of his career running a curiosity museum and staging freak shows. Barnum [Read more]

Once the Allies invaded North Africa, the Nazis began planning. Both sides knew Sicily was the obvious choice for the next Allied invasion, so the [Read more]

After a childhood spent roaming Europe, Freya Stark began saving money to take Arabic lessons. Once fluent, she traveled into areas few outsiders had ever [Read more]

After the Japanese ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi died, regents and bureaucrats scrambled for power. The rivals Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari rallied supporters to face off [Read more]

When Adam Worth stole a portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, he fell in love with the painting. But a botched theft in Belgium landed [Read more]