Science

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.

How a bloody gun duel between two doctors in Transylvania sparked a frenzy of outrage—and helped create the American Medical Association.

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over.

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.

Scientific research and historical accounts can help us identify and dissect the threat of ‘coercive persuasion.’

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for fifty years along the way.

The statesman was embarrassed by the mishap—no doubt a murder most fowl.

On the origins, use, and abuse of mugshots.

A friend of Henry David Thoreau, Ellen Sewall Osgood's pursuit of her scientific passion illuminates the limits and possibilities placed on the era's women.

Today’s “medical freedom” warriors are drawing on a centuries-old American tradition.

Biased ideas about a link between body size and health have led many people to dismiss unexpected scientific findings.

Morton and his skull measurements have long been part of the scholarship on American racism, but what happens when we draw Audubon into the racial drama?

The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world’s fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?

Benjamin Franklin's writing about losing his son to smallpox is a must-read for parents weighing COVID-19 vaccines today.

And that’s exactly why there is no need to overreact.

How Rosalind Franklin, the crystallographer whose data were crucial to solving the structure of DNA, was written out of the story of scientific discovery.

A new book challenges the notion that independent inventors were shunted aside in the 20th century by anonymous scientists in corporate research laboratories.

The “peaceful revolution” of rural electrification.

The game that launched today’s massive video game industry was not a roaring success. The oft-told story of why turns out to be off the mark.

The psychological forces driving “red COVID” have deep historical roots.

Archaeology and genetics keep rewriting the ancient peopling of the Americas.

Local evidence of the cataclysm has literally washed away over the years. But Oregon’s Douglas firs may have recorded clues deep in their tree rings.

The pawpaw is finding champions again after colonizers' dismissal, increasing globalization and economic needs.

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

The pygmy mammoth only lived on California's Channel Islands, and was half the size of its Columbian mammoth ancestor.

The Viking missions set the gold standard for landing on Mars, but they couldn't resolve the big question — are we alone?

Slave ships and colonial plantations created environments that enabled doctors to study how diseases spread.

Every medical intervention—even one with a centuries-long history—brings dangers, some of which become clear only later.

Gender and stuttering in the early twentieth-century United States.

A look at African-American scholars' contributions to health disparity discourse.