Science

When the creator of MDMA first experimented with the drug, he felt a mellow sensation that he compared to "a low-calorie martini."

On May 1, 1924, the first iodized salt appeared on shelves, quickly solving an iodine deficiency crisis that plagued the northern U.S. “goiter belt.”

A collection of records from the Nixon Presidential Library and other sources on the internal debates Nixon advisors were having about climate change and environment.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying” sparked a revolution in end-of-life care. But soon she began to deny mortality altogether.

Despite assumptions about its demise, it is still enmeshed in the foundations of how some professions think about the world.

Considering how relationships of cooperation and perhaps even solidarity might be forged between human beings and animals.

Historians are working to shine a light on Alice Ball’s legacy and contributions to an early treatment of a dangerous and stigmatizing disease.

The history of the Nutrition Facts label exposes the power — and limitations — of such transparency.

Clare Beams on the dark legacy of a purported pregnancy miracle drug.

The nuisance of a new season.

Rat bones collected from centuries-old shipwrecks tell a story of ecological competition and swift victory.

The Chesapeake 1000, which can lift 1,000 tons, arrived in Baltimore on Friday. Decades ago, it helped build a ship for a CIA mission to recover Soviet secrets.

Meet the Washington artist who pioneered the field of medical illustration — and helped repair the lives of soldiers returning from WWI.

The term ‘money laundering’ is often associated with mobsters, drug lords and morally dubious executives. But the expression’s first use was far less lawless.

The self has never been more securely an object of classification than it is today.

Our age-based laws have never made sense. With modern science, they make even less sense.

How a 1960s interspecies communication experiment went haywire.

The disparate and intriguing connections found in environmental history, one tree ring at a time.

Despite knowing that plastic recycling wouldn't work, new documents show how petrochemical companies promoted it anyway.

For some, it is a luscious dessert, a delightful treasure hiding in the woods. For others, it is, to say the least, an acquired taste. It is an enigma.

Tracking the history of a curious scientific term.

A document in her papers in the Library of Congress sheds new light on postwar research on psychedelics.

Arsenic cycles through racism and empire in the Americas.

No, aliens haven’t visited the Earth. Why are so many smart people insisting otherwise?

Some years wield such power that you must comply with them.

This metamorphic record is a teaching tool, a flirtation device, a college radio favorite, a nostalgic object, and more. BOOP!

Well before the hippies arrived, LSD and other hallucinogens were poised to enter the American mainstream.

My mother was a beloved doctor. She is also a reminder, to me, of every Black doctor who is not here with us but should be.

The exhibition “Mermaids and Monsters” explores hoaxes of yore.

The 1886 blizzard imperiled settlers and left fields of dead cattle in its wake.