The Irish Potato Famine: An Unnatural Disaster, Pt. 2
In the mid-1800s, the poorest people in Ireland ate almost nothing but potatoes. Other crops were for selling. So when a blight cut a swath through the potato crop, the impact was severe, and politics...
19 Jun 201321min
The Irish Potato Famine: An Unnatural Disaster, Pt. 1
The history lesson kids often get on the Irish Potato Famine could be summed up as "a blight destroyed the potato crops, and a lot of people starved or moved away." Most kids ask, "Why didn't they eat...
17 Jun 201321min
Paul Poiret
French designer Paul Poiret's work, which was often avante-garde, changed the fashion world in significant ways. He got rid of corsets, introduced the concept of lifestyle branding, and used draping r...
11 Jun 201330min
Benjamin Banneker
Despite having almost no official schooling and being a man of color in Colonial America, Benjamin Banneker turned out to be such an accomplished scholar that schools and professorships are named afte...
10 Jun 201323min
Who was the real Robin Hood?
Robin Hood-style characters have been showing up in literature since the 14th century. Historians disagree about whether there was any truth to the legend, and we're wondering: Was Robin Hood real, an...
5 Jun 201322min
The Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenicians were great ship-builders, sailors and textile experts. But they're most known for developing the alphabet that many modern alphabets are descended from. What drove a merchant culture t...
3 Jun 201320min
Boxer Rebellion
"It was a culture clash of epic proportions. The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising, was a gruesome, violent slaughter of Chinese Christians and foreigners - followed by a gruesome, viole...
28 Mai 201328min
Heaven on Earth: the Brook Farm Community
In the 1840s, Boston's West Roxbury suburb -- which was completely rural at the time -- was home to an experiment in transcendentalist utopian living: the Brook Farm community. The idea was to create ...
27 Mai 201331min
