Skyscrapers, Part Two: An Arms Race to the Sky

Have you ever been so broke that you ended up creating your own currency? It may sound like a crazy idea today, but during the Great Depression multiple communities actually created and circulated the...

11 Jul 39min

Despite the misleading name, the U.S. "Civil War" was anything but. As North fought South, this short-lived, bloody conflict fundamentally shifted the course of the country. Yet if you go just a bit f...

9 Jul 37min

For several decades, Saturday morning cartoons were a massive industry in the United States. Every weekend, millions of American children tuned in to watch their favorite shows... and, later, bug thei...

7 Jul 45min

Picture this: It's late 1944, and you, like thousands of other people on the west coast of North America, have noticed bizarre, jellyfish-like objects floating through the sky. You call the local auth...

4 Jul 34min

In the economic boom of a post-World War II United States the sudden affordability of television fundamentally rocked the nation. From the 1950s on, millions of kids in America grew up watching Saturd...

2 Jul 42min

Today, everyone knows the potential dangers of both illegal and legal drugs. Some are more popular and more widely-accepted than others (shoutout to coffee!), but across time and cultures, it's an ope...

30 Jun 42min

Queen Marie Antoinette's reputation was already tarnished by gossip in 1784, but was completely ruined by the implication that she defrauded the crown jewelers, conning them out of a dazzling, expensi...

27 Jun 44min

Vikings! Even centuries after their heyday, these seafaring Scandinavian raiders are the subject of countless works of fiction and film -- and some of the stories about them are true. And, legend has ...

25 Jun 31min