Science

New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.

A huge expansion of the population of New Orleans created the perfect environment for the spread of yellow fever, and recent immigrants suffered most.

How Malcolm McClean's shipping containers conquered the global economy by land and sea.

An exclusive excerpt from "The One Device" about the engineering fight that created the iPhone as you know it.

In the sixties, the U.S. government ran a secret project to look for gold in the oddest places: seawater, meteorites, plants, even deer antlers.

For much of the twentieth century, African Americans embraced eugenics as a means of racial improvement.

The complicated story behind the invention of sound recording.

Ever wondered why email, trash cans, Google Docs and desktops look the way they do? The answer lies in 1960s hippie culture.

In the 1950s, if a woman wanted to know if she was pregnant, she needed to get her urine injected into a frog.

Once upon a time, the EPA had a golden age.

Blacks continue to die younger than people in other groups in the Black Belt.

Emerging science is putting the lie to American meritocracy.

From the 1930s to the 1950s a radical surgery — the lobotomy — would forever change our understanding and treatment of the mentally ill.

When the war was over, the developed world had little doubt that a nation’s future standing in the world was predicated on access to oil.

The story of water in the West, climate change, and the birth of modern environmentalism lies at the bottom of Lake Powell.

Clouds and conspiracies.

At his peak, newspapers loved to tease the inventor. They also feared him.

You must always caulk the wagon. Never ford the river.

How antebellum women prevented themselves from getting pregnant during an era when their identity was founded on being a mother.

Nostalgia and technological innovation paved the way for the rise of model-train giant Lionel.

Today, we tend to assume dieting is for women, but in the 1860s, it was a masculine pursuit.

Decades after Dr. Jonas Salk opposed patenting the polio vaccine, the pharmaceutical industry has changed.

As the stigma of being transgender begins to ease, medicine is starting to catch up

Cholera maps chart the movement of the disease, and the terror that accompanied it.

A new book outlines an epidemic of over-diagnosis and addiction.

Stories of the places, the people, and the organizations that battled the American influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.

When an event promises you will "hear the body broadcast its sounds," "see without light," and "see dancers float on air,” there’s bound to be disappointment.

Six years ago, the world’s biggest library decided to archive every single tweet. Turns out that’s pretty hard to do.

In the age of Trump, Madison Grant's influential work of scientific racism takes on a new salience.

The genealogy of a killing machine.