Menu
Idea

death

454
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 421–450 of 453 results. Go to first page

The Stranger Who Started an Epidemic

A huge expansion of the population of New Orleans created the perfect environment for the spread of yellow fever, and recent immigrants suffered most.
by Anna Faherty via Wellcome Collection on June 15, 2017
A t-shirt that reads "Wanted: Notorious Disgrace to America," with a gun crosshair on Colin Kaepernick.

Spiders, Stars, and Death

It is worth taking a moment to recover the genealogy for the "crosshairs," the universal modern index of imminent violent killing.
by D. Graham Burnett via Cabinet on June 7, 2017
Family photo of a woman pulling a child on a sled down a snowy street.

My Grandmother's Desperate Choice

My questions about my grandmother's death – from a self-induced abortion – haven’t changed since I was 12. What feels new is the urgency of her story.
by Kate Daloz via The New Yorker on May 14, 2017
The Mount Carmel Center in Waco, Texas engulfed in flames

How Religious Literacy Might Have Changed the Waco Tragedy

Religious scholars argue that the Waco raid was not justified and that with more understanding of theology, the loss of life could have been avoided.
by Peter Feuerherd, Jean E. Rosenfield, Mary Zeiss Stange, Ivan Strenski via JSTOR Daily on April 19, 2017
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.
Agronomist George Tynes, flanked by Soviet army cadets
partner

Brave New World

In the 1930s, 16 African-American families from the South rejected the American experiment and looked to Communist Uzbekistan for a chance to build a new world.
via BackStory on November 11, 2016
Cover of "Ghostland: An American History," made to look like a cemetery headstone.

The Family That Would Not Live

Writer Colin Dickey sets out across America to investigate America's haunted spaces in order to uncover what their ghost stories say about who we were, are, and will be.
by Colin Dickey via Longreads on October 5, 2016

Mapping a Demon Malady: Cholera Maps and Affect in 1832

Cholera maps chart the movement of the disease, and the terror that accompanied it.
by Sarah Schuetze via Commonplace on September 25, 2016

A Century of Highway Zombies

Since the 1920s, “highway hypnosis” has lulled drivers to disaster.
by Carmine Grimaldi via The Atlantic on July 29, 2016
Looping sky writing from an airplane above a city.

Notes Toward a History of Skywriting

A language of the air.
by D. Graham Burnett via Cabinet on December 15, 2015
People standing around the aftermath of a train accident in 1926.

A Roomful of Death and Destruction

The room at One Police Plaza, jammed to the ceiling with filing cabinets and boxes, and reeking of vinegar, held about 180,000 images ranging from 1914 to 1972.
by Lucy Sante via New York Review of Books on June 22, 2015

Mother’s Day or Mothers’ Day

The origins of the Hallmark holiday are rooted in a much greater cause.
by Heather Cox Richardson via We're History on May 7, 2015
Photograph of Boston Corbett

The Insane Story of the Guy Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln

Meet Boston Corbett, the self-castrated hatmaker who was John Wilkes Booth's Jack Ruby.
by Bill Jensen via Washingtonian on April 13, 2015
Edgar Allan Poe

On Edgar Allan Poe

Crypts, entombments, physical morbidity: these nightmares are prominent in Poe’s tales, a fictional world in which the word that recurs most crucially is horror.
by Marilynne Robinson via New York Review of Books on January 5, 2015
Neighborhood residents stand in front of a 25th anniversary protest mural outside the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.

The Worst Industrial Disaster in the History of the World

For the people of Old Bhopal, an accident there had sent forty metric tons of methyl isocyanate into a runaway reaction that released a toxic gas.
by Siddhartha Deb via The Baffler on October 28, 2014

1914: Into the Fire

An excerpt from a recently discovered memoir of World War I, "The Burning of the World."
by Béla Zombory-Moldován via New York Review of Books on July 28, 2014
Illustration of grave robbing

Body Snatchers of Old New York

In the 1780s, medical schools used cadavers stolen from the cemeteries of slaves.
by Bess Lovejoy via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 13, 2013
An old sepia photo of a man in a "Nashville" baseball jersey and cap.

The Man With The Killer Pitch

In 1918, Tom "Shotgun" Rogers earned himself a piece of baseball immortality—by killing a former teammate with a fastball.
by W. M. Akers via Narratively on October 1, 2013
A frame from Zapruder's film.

The Other Shooter: The Saddest and Most Expensive 26 Seconds of Amateur Film Ever Made

For many of us, especially those who weren’t alive when it happened, we’re all watching that event through Zapruder’s lens.
by Alex Pasternack via Vice on November 12, 2012
partner

How Suffering Shaped Emancipation

Jim Downs discusses the plight of freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
by Jim Downs, Robin Lindley via HNN on August 6, 2012
partner

Who Invented Memorial Day?

As Americans enjoy the holiday weekend, does anyone know how Memorial Day originated?
by Jim Downs via HNN on May 28, 2012
Henry Clay's body in his death bed, surrounded by mourners.

All That Remains of Henry Clay

Political funerals and the tour of Henry Clay's corpse.
by Sarah J. Purcell via Commonplace on April 2, 2012
A woman waving to a man who is joining passing soldiers. From the sheet music for "The Soldier's Farewell to His Bride," 1864.
partner

The Woman’s War

Gender dynamics on the home front, and the ways in which the Civil War is distinct from other American conflicts.
via BackStory on March 31, 2011

On the Death Sentence

David Garland makes a powerful argument that will persuade many readers that the death penalty is unwise and unjustified.
by John Paul Stevens via New York Review of Books on December 23, 2010
Bob Dylan.

Legacy of a Lonesome Death

Had Bob Dylan not written a song about it, the 1963 killing of a black servant by a white socialite’s cane might have been long forgotten.
by Ian Frazier via Mother Jones on May 8, 2010
Joseph Jefferson, Palm Beach, Florida, circa 1904

Who Was the Most Famous of All?

The tale of the long forgotten Joseph Jefferson, who revolutionized character acting in 19th century American theater.
by Robert Gottlieb via New York Review of Books on October 22, 2009

Abortion in American History

How do ideological debates on gender roles influence the abortion debate?
by Katha Pollitt via The Atlantic on May 1, 1997
Nuclear weapon mushroom cloud

Mythologizing the Bomb

The beauty of the atomic scientists' calculations hid from them the truly Faustian contract they scratched their names to.
by E. L. Doctorow via The Nation on August 14, 1995
A dairy farm near Charlottesville (Library of Congress).

'Charlottesville': A Government-Commissioned Story About Nuclear War

A fictional 1979 account of how the small Virginia city would weather an all-out nuclear exchange between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.
by Nan Randall via The Atlantic on January 1, 1979
Elvis Presley dancing.

How Long Will We Care?

A music critic assesses Elvis Presley's influence on popular culture.
by Lester Bangs via Village Voice on August 29, 1977
Lithograph of the great Chicago fire.

October 8, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire Kills Hundreds and Burns Most of Downtown

“Very sensible men have declared that they were fully impressed at such a time with the conviction that it was the burning of the world.”
by Frederick Law Olmsted, Richard Kreitner via The Nation on November 9, 1871
View More
30 of
454

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History