The Florence. Cathedral
For more than a century, one of Europe's richest cities worked on a building it did not yet know how to finish. Its designers created an enormous space that seemed impossible to cover, leaving future...
20 Aug 15min
The Surprising History of the Plow
For most of human history, growing food depended on one deceptively simple piece of technology. Over thousands of years, it evolved from little more than a sharpened stick into a machine that could t...
19 Aug 15min
The Liberal Arts
For thousands of years, educators have wrestled with the question: what knowledge does a person truly need? The answer once included seven formal subjects that established the foundation of education...
18 Aug 15min
John Dickinson: The Reluctant Revolutionary
He was one of the most influential political writers of the American Revolution, helped shape the argument against British taxation, drafted major documents for the Continental Congress, and helped cr...
17 Aug 16min
The US Occupation of Japan
Following the end of World War II, the United States occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952. During the occupation, the United States aimed to achieve three main goals: demilitarization, democratization, a...
16 Aug 15min
Currencies of the World
Every day, billions of people exchange pieces of paper, metal coins, and increasingly, numbers on a screen. The names attached to that money often have histories stretching back centuries, with orig...
15 Aug 15min
The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Deng Xiaoping
For decades, China was transformed by revolution, war, and the radical policies of Mao Zedong. After Mao’s death, however, power eventually fell to a man who had twice been purged, stripped of his p...
14 Aug 16min
The Battle of Antietam
September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest day in the history of the United States. In just 12 hours, 22,726 people were killed, wounded, or went missing just outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland, in one of th...
13 Aug 15min
