Culture

On June 15, 1846, Francis Parkman Jr., a young, Harvard-educated historian, arrived at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to begin his journey along the Oregon Trail.

Buying a necktie for your dad is a stereotypical way to celebrate Father's Day, but it's in keeping with the holiday's history.

The White House wants to reinstate the sale of horses for slaughter, but eating horse meat has always been politically treacherous.

Barry R. Harwood says of George Hunzinger's work, “No one else was doing this. They didn’t have a name for it yet.”

For talented black spellers in the 1960s, the segregated local spelling bee was the beginning of the long road to Washington, D.C.

Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did "more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."

For a century, school showers have anticipated the current debate about bathrooms.

The surprising persistence of Henry David Thoreau.

The rise of recorded music left many musicians fearful of a takeover by "canned music."

A series of deadly shark attacks by the Matawan Man-Eater shook New Jersey and prompted President Wilson to declare war on sharks.

John T. Edge's "The Potlikker Papers" looks at multiculturalism, conflict, and civil rights in the American South—all through the history of the region's food.

Perhaps the oldest continuously available video game ever made; its history in documents and objects.

The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper at the exact moment that the world was ready to take a rock album seriously as art.

Kente serves as more than a pop of color at college graduations.

When trailers offered a compact version of the American dream.

Neither apples nor the pie originally came from America, but Americans have made this dish their own

Music scholar Katya Deve explores the history and geography of hip-hop.

He would point out that what plagues us are America's sins coming home to roost.

A new British television series, Jamestown, set off a minor public debate about just how rebellious women could be in the past.

On the witch craze of early modern Europe, and how the concurrent rise of the mass-produced woodcut helped forge the archetype of the broom-riding crone.

How Americans went from adventurous eaters to plain janes—and then back again.

Benjamin Franklin even wrote an ode to a fallen one.

The founder of a popular South Carolina barbecue restaurant was a white supremacist.

“Mississippi Goddam” was an angry response to tragedy, in show tune form.

And how the term came to be code for pot-smoking in the first place.

The life of Guitar Shorty was a mixture of facts, lies and fantasy. He was a blues musician who lived far outside mainstream society.

Until the 1940s, Jews in America were considered a separate race. Their journey to whiteness has important lessons.

A new book argues that Darwin failed to capture the American imagination because of the untimely death of Henry David Thoreau.

A look at the first year of the band originally known as Mookie Blaylock.

The beloved board game's long-hidden origin story debunks the myth of a male lone genius.