1999 Yugoslavian stamp depicting a NATO jet launching a missile at an oil refinery.

Stamps Capture Unchanging Face of U.S. Violence Abroad

Countries have also used their postal systems to fight back against aggression.
Collage of letters and postcards detailing a fraudulent scheme.

Letters Hidden in My Family’s Attic Reveal a 1910s Bank Con in Key West

The con artist was either a very unlucky man or a trickster who got away with it all.
A 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in Lake Mendota, Wisconsin.

Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as Egypt's Great Pyramids

Tamara Thomsen discovered a 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota in 2021, spurring efforts to catalog historic canoes statewide.
American Indian children in boarding school.

More Than 3,100 Students Died at Schools Built to Crush Native American Cultures

The Washington Post has found more than three times as many deaths as the U.S. government documented in its investigation of Indian boarding schools.
The Griffith Observatory, constructed by the Works Progress Administration, on a hill overlooking Los Angeles.

A New Deal for Architecture

What it conveys is quite specific: grandeur, beauty, dynamism, and power.
Belle da Costa Greene.

The Hidden Story of J. P. Morgan’s Librarian

Belle da Costa Greene, a brilliant archivist, buried her own history.
New release of Louis Vasnier recording.

The Earliest Known ‘Country’ Recording Has Been Found. The Singer? A Black Man.

A new release of an 1891 song by Louis Vasnier deepens what we know about the genre’s origins.
Hazel Fellows sewing an Apollo A7L spacesuit at International Latex Corporation

Common Threads: From Playtex to Prada — NASA’s Surprising Spacesuit Collaborations

NASA recently announced a partnership with a couture designer, but in the 1960s, the first spacesuits were made by a company known for bras and girdles.
Bob Dylan performing on stage.

The Lines, They Are A-Changin’

Getting lost and found in the Bob Dylan archives.
Title page of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?
1937 ad showing three women in underwear.

From Torpedo Bras to Whale Tails: A Brief History of Women’s Underwear

The popular reception of thongs, bras, boy shorts and other intimate items.
The first British gravestone in the American colonies, a slab of black limestone with an engraving of a knight.

America’s Oldest Surviving Tombstone Probably Came From Belgium

How researchers analyzed limestone to determine the age and origins of the grave maker, which marked the final resting place of a prominent Jamestown colonist.
Three ring binder filled with a baseball card collection.

Batting by the Numbers

The evolution of baseball’s perfect lineup.
A portrait of Major Ridge, an older Cherokee man.
partner

Revealed Through a Mountain of Paperwork

As the nation’s highest court debated Native sovereignty, I was in the archives, uncovering family stories entwined with those debates.
Henry Kissinger

Who Wanted to Kill Henry Kissinger?

Newly-released FBI files show a lot of strange threats against the former secretary of state’s safety—and say a lot about 1970s America.
The gym and auditorium at Schenley High School in Pittsburgh, built just before the school closed in 2008.

What Abandoned Schools Can Teach Us

Empty chairs, empty tables, and the dismantling of the American Dream.
Civil Defense warning.

The Occasion Instant, 1961

What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?
Redacted papers falling to the ground.

The War Crimes That the Military Buried

This large database of possible American war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that the military-justice system rarely punishes perpetrators.
Seymour Hersh, Henry Kissinger, and Hersh's newspaper article about the CIA scandal.

The CIA-in-Chile Scandal at 50

Documents show Henry Kissinger misled President Gerald Ford about clandestine U.S. efforts to undermine the elected government of Salvador Allende.
Painting of enslaved people running away from hands grabbing at them.

Remarkable Documents Lay Bare New York’s History of Slavery

A newly digitized set of records reveals the plight and bravery of enslaved people in the North.
A klaxon car horn.

A Loud Warning From the Past About Living With Cars

Klaxon horns, once standard safety equipment, disappeared from the roads after World War I. But the tensions they exposed about urban noise still echo.
Emily Dickinson.

When Emily Dickinson Mailed It In

The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?
Karl Stoltzfus in front of the first Air Force One.

One Man’s Quest to Restore the First-Ever Air Force One

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s plane is starting to look like itself again.

Scenes of Reading on the Early Portrait Postcard

When picture postcards began circulating with a frenzy at the turn of the 20th century, a certain motif proved popular: photographs of people posed with books.
Library card catalog.

To Preserve Their Work — and Drafts of History — Journalists Take Archiving Into Their Own Hands

From loading up the Wayback Machine to 72 hours of scraping, journalists are doing what they can to keep their clips when websites go dark.
Portrait of a Black woman; artist unknown, American, circa 1830–1835.

In Search of the Real Hannah Crafts

"The Bondwoman’s Narrative" is the first novel by a Black woman to describe slavery from the inside. Recently, scholars have discovered her true identity.
1920s advertisement for a home refridgerator.

Homing Devices: Women’s Home Planning Scrapbooks, 1920s—1950s

Women on the homefront planned future homes with scrapbooks, blending wartime duty with dreams of postwar prosperity and modern comforts.
Interior of a Kitchen, by Eliphalet Fraser Andrews.
partner

Mastering the Art of Reading an Old Recipe

For every moment of historical significance, there is a figure — often hidden — who fed the figures we do remember.
Evelyn Nesbit Thaw dodging a camera, 1909.
partner

Overexposed

What happened to privacy when Americans gained easy access to cameras in the Gilded Age?
Two people calling on AT&T PicturePhone.
partner

A Prehistory of Zoom

Concerns about privacy and pressures regarding the physical appearance of women and their homes contributed to the failure of AT&T’s 1960s Picturephone.