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Lethal injection table.
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Lethal Injection Is Not Based on Science

The history of the three-drug combo used in death-penalty executions. 
by Corinna Barrett Lain via HNN on April 29, 2025
A younger person's hand holding the hand of an older person in bed.

A Good Death: The Modern Hospice Movement

Cicely Saunders realized that preparing for a good death is the first step in providing one.
by Jessi Benson via Nursing Clio on November 13, 2024
Electric taxis, cars driven like carriages, moving through the streets of Manhattan in 1898.

On This Day in 1899, a Car Fatally Struck a Pedestrian for the First Time in American History

Henry Hale Bliss’ death presaged the battle between the 20th-century automobile lobby and walkers in U.S. cities.
by Chris Klimek via Smithsonian on September 13, 2024
A copy of "On Death and Dying" with a magnifying glass in front of it.

Lost in the Five Stages of Grief

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying” sparked a revolution in end-of-life care. But soon she began to deny mortality altogether.
by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on April 24, 2024
Exhibit

Living With the Dead

From rituals of mourning to spirit mediums and ghost stories, Americans' varied attempts to connect with those who have gone before us.
The original members of the hip-hop group De La Soul.

Hip-Hop at Fifty: An Elegy

A generation is still dying younger than it should—this time, of “natural causes.”
by Jelani Cobb via The New Yorker on March 16, 2023
Boxing ring set up in Dodger Stadium.

Whoever Killed Davey Moore Also Killed Boxing At Dodger Stadium

Why the first prizefight at Dodger's Stadium would become its last (outside of fiction).
by Vince Guerrieri via Defector on February 28, 2023

The Country That Could Not Mourn

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how hard it is for Americans to grieve.
by Sarah Jaffe via The New Republic on September 23, 2022
A room full of empty hospital beds.

Modern Medicine Has Improved Our Lives, But What About Our Deaths?

Anthropologists study the hormones in hair to compare the stress levels of people nearing death today with those who died 100 years ago.
by Katie East via Nursing Clio on August 30, 2022
A portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with white hair and a full beard.

A Beautiful Ending

On dying and heaven in the time of Longfellow.
by Nicholas A. Basbanes via Humanities on June 15, 2020
Photo of John Brown holding a flag and raising his right hand as if in oath.

A Hero in the Midst of Cowards

The righteous rage of John Brown.
by Jonathan Burdick via The Erie Reader on December 4, 2019

Who is Dead?

What constitutes death is based on more factors than those that are medical.
by Sarah Swedberg via Nursing Clio on September 26, 2018

Fine Specimens

How Walt Whitman became the quintessential poet of disability and death.
by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on March 11, 2018

What Do We Do With Our Dead?

Our mortuary conventions reveal a lot about our relation to the past.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on October 16, 2017
Joe Biden as a new Senator, sitting next to framed photographs of his family

Death and the All-American Boy

Joe Biden was a lot more careful around the press after this 1974 profile.
by Kitty Kelley via Washingtonian on June 1, 1974
California gold miners, ca. 1850–1852.

A Gold Rush of Witnesses

Letters, diaries, and remembrances shared on JSTOR by University of the Pacific reveal the hardships of day-to-day life during the California Gold Rush.
by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on April 23, 2025
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.
by Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Andrew Ba Tran, Nilo Tabrizy, Jahi Chikwendiu via Washington Post on December 22, 2024

Infectious Diseases Killed Victorian Children at Alarming Rates. Novels Show the Fragility of Health

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.
by Andrea Kaston Tange via The Conversation on December 11, 2024
A painting of a Civil War battle.

New Estimates of US Civil War Mortality from Full-Census Records

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in US history. However, incomplete records have made it difficult to estimate the exact death toll.
by Joan Barceló, Jeffrey L. Jensen, Leonid Peisakhin, Haoyu Zhai via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on November 18, 2024
A drawing of a skeletal hand erupting from the ground and separating a house with a Harris/Walz sign and a house with a Trump/Vance sign. Face masks float in the wind.

There’s a Very Specific Issue Haunting This Election. No One Is Talking About It.

You can bury it. But you can’t escape it.
by Grady Hendrix via Slate on October 31, 2024
A photograph of the massive AIDS memorial quilt with the Washington Monument in the background.

“I Am the Face of AIDS”

Ryan White helped challenge existing understandings of the AIDS epidemic. But his story also reinforced arbitrary divisions between the guilty and the innocent.
by Paul M. Renfro via Public Books on October 22, 2024
The Geologic Time Spiral showing different periods over millions of years.

Deep Time and the Civil War Dead

The Civil War's vast death toll joined Earth's deep time story, magnifying its meaning as part of God's creative acts across eons.
by Caroline Winterer via Princeton University Press on October 15, 2024
Small headstones for pets in Hyde Park, London, dating back to the 1880s.

Why the World’s First Pet Cemetery Was Revolutionary

A new book charts the history of pet cemeteries and honors the universal experience of grieving an animal companion.
by Rachel Nuwer via Smithsonian on September 24, 2024
Horace Greeley

This Presidential Candidate Died in a Sanatorium Less Than a Month After Losing the Election

Horace Greeley ran against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant in November 1872. Twenty-four days later, he died of unknown causes at a private mental health facility.
by Greg Daugherty via Smithsonian on September 19, 2024
A painting of a desolated, ruined street.
partner

Defeating Death Only with Death

On civilians’ opinion of killing civilians by air during World War II.
by Cormac Ó Gráda via HNN on September 10, 2024
Funeral home.

Purple Coffins: Death Care and Life Extension in 20th Century American South

How deathly rituals affect our perception of personal dignity.
by Kristine M. McCusker via Circulating Now on September 5, 2024
A photograph of the battlefield at Antietam.
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A Remote Reality

Depictions of Antietam couldn’t possible capture the magnitude of the battle’s horror.
by Stephen Budiansky via HNN on September 3, 2024
President Ronald Reagan, pictured waving to a crowd shortly before John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate him on March 30, 1981.

The History of Presidential Assassination Attempts, From Andrew Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt

Before last weekend’s attack on Donald Trump, would-be assassins targeted Ronald Reagan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and seven other presidents or candidates.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on July 17, 2024
Billie Holiday singing in a recording studio.

Decades After Billie Holiday’s Death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is Still a Searing Testament to Injustice

Christian and Jewish themes influenced the world of art around one of jazz’s greatest singers.
by Tracy Fessenden via The Conversation on July 15, 2024
A drilling crew in the Hawk's Nest Tunnel.

On Raymond Thompson’s “Appalachian Ghost”

Black miners were intentionally erased from the record of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster. A new book reinserts them into the narrative.
by Jody DiPerna via Belt Magazine on June 20, 2024
A billboard next to a road that reads, "Hell is real."

How 19th-Century Spiritualists ‘Canceled’ the Idea of Hell to Address Social and Political Concerns

Spiritualists believed that after shedding the body in death, the spirit would continue on a celestial journey and help those on Earth create a more just world.
by Lindsay DiCuirci via The Conversation on May 8, 2024
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