Stories from this author
Jane Austen Never Loved Bath—but Bath Loves Jane Austen. Now, the City Is Exploring Why the Novelist Was So Unhappy There
To celebrate the author’s 250th birthday, a new exhibition spotlights her complicated relationship with the English city where she set parts of “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey”
Gas Workers Digging Beneath the Streets of Lima Stumble Upon 1,000-Year-Old Mummy With Dark Brown Hair
The burial belonged to a child who may have lived among fishermen from the Chancay culture, which thrived in Peru before the rise of the Inca Empire
Tattered Pages Discovered in Storage Reveal an Enslaved Man’s Daring Bid for Freedom—and His Second Life at Sea
Historians are investigating the haunting handwritten manuscript, which chronicles Thomas White’s escape from slavery in Maryland and adventures around the world nearly 200 years ago
These Ancient Scrolls Have Been a Tantalizing Mystery for 2,000 Years. Researchers Just Deciphered a Title for the First Time
Mount Vesuvius’ eruption preserved the Herculaneum scrolls beneath a blanket of ash. Two millennia later, X-ray scans show that one of them is a philosophical text called “On Vice”
The New Pope Is Calling Himself Leo—Just Like 13 Other Pontiffs Who Came Before Him. Who Are They?
When Robert Prevost was elected pope this week, he chose one of the most popular papal names. The lives of the Pope Leos who preceded him may offer insight into his approach to the papacy
The Only Black, All-Female Unit to Serve Overseas in World War II Receives the Congressional Gold Medal
The Six Triple Eight cleared a years-long backlog of mail in just three months. Eighty years later, the unit is finally getting the recognition it deserves
Paul Revere Wasn’t the Only Midnight Rider Who Dashed Through the Darkness to Warn the Patriots That the British Were Coming
Revere, who was later immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, was one of many riders who rode through the countryside, spreading the alarm on April 18, 1775
Flannery O’Connor Wanted to Shake Her Readers Awake. Her Family Wanted Her to Write the Next ‘Gone With the Wind’
This year marks the writer’s 100th birthday. Through fiction anchored in her Southern background and Catholic faith, O’Connor revealed how candid confrontations with darkness lead to moments of reckoning
The QWERTY Keyboard Will Never Die. Where Did the 150-Year-Old Design Come From?
The invention’s true origin story has long been the subject of debate. Some argue it was created to prevent typewriter jams, while others insist it’s linked to the telegraph
The Real Story Behind ‘Nickel Boys’ and the Brutal Florida Reform School That Inspired the Film
Based on a Colson Whitehead novel, the Oscar-nominated movie dramatizes the story of the Florida School for Boys, which traumatized children as young as 5 for more than a century
Why Was Zora Neale Hurston So Obsessed With the Biblical Villain Herod the Great?
The Harlem Renaissance author spent her last years writing about the ancient king. Six decades after her death, her unfinished novel has finally been published for the first time
The Museum of Bad Gifts Is a Celebration of Outlandish Objects, From Ceramic Clowns to Cat Nail Clippings
Presented like pieces of fine art, the peculiar presents are mounted on the walls of a gallery in Toronto. Many of them will ultimately be sold at auction
Happy Public Domain Day! Popeye, ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ ‘The Sound and the Fury’ and Thousands of Other Captivating Creations Are Finally Free for Everyone to Use
On January 1, 2025, copyrights will expire for books, films, comic strips, musical compositions and other creative works from 1929, as well as sound recordings from 1924
Researchers Thought They Found Amelia Earhart’s Missing Plane. It Turned Out to Be a Plane-Shaped Pile of Rocks
Months after capturing a promising sonar image, they learned that the blurry object was nothing more than a rock formation that resembled the aviator’s Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft
The Ouija Board Can’t Connect Us to Paranormal Forces—but It Can Tell Us a Lot About Psychology, Grief and Uncertainty
The game was born from Americans’ obsession with Spiritualism in the 19th century. Since then, it’s functioned as a reflection of their deep-seated beliefs and anxieties for more than a century
A Secret Sculpture Built for John F. Kennedy’s Grave Vanished in the 1970s. Half a Century Later, the Mystery Has Been Solved
The bronze wreath immortalized the moment when the members of the Honor Guard removed their hats and placed them on the president’s grave during his burial
This Russian Family Lived Alone in the Siberian Wilderness for 40 Years, Unaware of World War II or the Moon Landing
In 1978, Soviet geologists stumbled upon a family of five in the taiga. They had been cut off from almost all human contact since fleeing religious persecution in 1936
How One Researcher Accidentally Killed One of the Oldest Trees in the World
In 1964, a graduate student cut down a bristlecone pine in Nevada. The tree, now known as Prometheus, turned out to be nearly 5,000 years old
A Japanese Soldier’s Son Receives a Memento of His Father, Who Was Killed During World War II
The so-called good-luck flag, which hung on an American veteran’s wall for many years, returned home last month after nearly eight decades
To Strike Fear Into Napoleon’s Occupying Army, These Retreating Soldiers Burned Down Their Own City
When the blaze in Moscow subsided on September 18, 1812, the French—who had traveled hundreds of miles into Russia—were left without vital resources as a brutal winter approached
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