Stuff You Missed in History Class

In the mid-1800s, the poorest people in Ireland ate almost nothing but potatoes. Other crops were for selling. So when a blight cut a swath [Read more]

The history lesson kids often get on the Irish Potato Famine could be summed up as “a blight destroyed the potato crops, and a lot [Read more]

French designer Paul Poiret’s work, which was often avante-garde, changed the fashion world in significant ways. He got rid of corsets, introduced the concept of [Read more]

Despite having almost no official schooling and being a man of color in Colonial America, Benjamin Banneker turned out to be such an accomplished scholar [Read more]

Robin Hood-style characters have been showing up in literature since the 14th century. Historians disagree about whether there was any truth to the legend, and [Read more]

The Phoenicians were great ship-builders, sailors and textile experts. But they’re most known for developing the alphabet that many modern alphabets are descended from. What [Read more]

“It was a culture clash of epic proportions. The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising, was a gruesome, violent slaughter of Chinese Christians and [Read more]

In the 1840s, Boston’s West Roxbury suburb — which was completely rural at the time — was home to an experiment in transcendentalist utopian living: [Read more]

Vladimir I is often credited with bringing Christianity to Russia, though he actually embraced paganism first as Grand Prince of Kievan Rus. Wishing to unite [Read more]

Though it’s most famous for its rats, the story of this temple starts with Hindu goddess Durga and Karni Mata, a 15th-century mystic believed to [Read more]