Eugenicists like Paul Popenoe relied on dangerously flawed theories of heredity to describe different groups of people. Popenoe shows a couple a pedigree of "Black People of Artistic Ability," 1930.

Although President Ronald Reagan did not actually use the phrase "evil empire" in this June 8, 1982 speech, he described the collapse of global communism as inevitable. We're approaching the end of a ...

When Venustiano Carranza was president. 12,000 Americans crossed the border To hunt down and punish Pancho Villa for a “slip.” Poncho Villa (between 1908 and 1919, Library of Congress On March 9, 1916 ...

The Levi Leonard Papers, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa. For Union Pacific executive Thomas Durant, it was a money-making machine. It was a revolutionary business model previously ...

The roller coaster has its origins in St. Petersburg, Russia, as a simple slide that took thrillseekers down an icy ramp past a variety of colored lanterns. Catherine the Great gave this custom a ...

Three decades before the “War on Terror” and its orientation of “Islamic terrorism” as the principal threat to American security, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was its standing talisman. The color ...

When the Pill came on the market in 1960, it was enthusiastically embraced by the medical profession and the public. But by the end of the decade, after a crisis over the drug Thalidomide (which was ...

When vaudeville impresario Martin Beck "discovered" a struggling Harry Houdini in 1899, it was Houdini's ability to escape from handcuffs which caught his attention. Although Houdini was hardly the ...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of an organization that could represent all workers — and end major corporations' corruption and exploitation of labor — came to life. The man who would ...

Sonoma State Home for the Feebleminded Hospital, where sterilizations took place. Historical postcard, from the personal collection of Alex Wellerstein. In February 1930, Concepcion Ruiz, a ...

Intent on disrupting North Vietnamese supply lines, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon authorized the secret bombing and invasion of neighboring Cambodia in 1969. The campaign set off a series of ...

As the extent of the quiz show deception was revealed, the networks pulled all their high stakes game shows from the air, replacing them with westerns and detective shows. But the scandal affected far ...