Science

The 1980s brought about America's gym obsession—and a machine that demands a notoriously grueling cardio workout

A new look at detailed data about Civil War skirmishes along the Mississippi River reveals another key to the Union's victory.

People hunted and raised small farms near the ruins of the ancient city.

Despite its countercultural associations today, organic farming was entangled with fascist and quasi-fascist politics at its origins.

Acclimatization societies believed that animals could fill the gaps of a deficient environment.

Sixty years ago, a sharecropper’s son invented a technology to identify faces. The record of his role all but vanished. Who was Woody Bledsoe, and who was he working for?

Evidence shows Native Americans in New England lived lightly on the land for thousands of years. Europeans were the first to majorly impact the environment.

A longer look reveals interesting patterns and may clarify what is driving a rise in suicides.

A study of more than 100 cities shows neighborhoods subjected to discriminatory housing policies nearly a century ago are hotter today than other areas.

Reflections on the long career of race science at Mr. Jefferson's university.

From poisoned monks and nuclear bombs to the “transfermium wars,” mapping the atomic world hasn’t been easy.

Ed Dwight Jr. trained to go to the moon, but racism in the selection process kept him out of space.

A new DNA study of skeletons from a farmstead on the Delaware frontier has revealed key information about the early transatlantic slave trade.

This 20th century ornithologist earned the respect of her contemporaries for her animal behavior research that went against the grain of traditional science.

In 1873, there weren’t very many options for the public in the United States to see what a real whale looked like.

The Vietnam draft lotteries functioned as a randomized experiment—which has allowed social scientists to study its life-changing effects.

In 1953, as a political battle raged over the US’s nuclear future, the physicist lost a classified document on an overnight train from Philadelphia to DC.

The Comte de Buffon's thirty-six volume Natural History claimed that America was a land of degeneracy. That enraged Thomas Jefferson.

Wild, feral and fossil-fuelled, fire lights up the globe. Is it time to declare that humans have created a Pyrocene?

The world's last climate crisis demonstrates that surviving is possible if bold economic and social change is embraced.

Liesl Schillinger Considers the Impeachment of Donald Trump vs. the Indictment of George III.

Mo Rocca on the struggle to depathologize homosexuality.

The transformation of the environmental movement.

The inventor did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification.

Apollo 11, the JPEG, the first pop-up ad, and 33 other bits of software that have transformed our world.

Can the social contract be protected from a measles outbreak?

The books examine the history of space exploration, from the race to discover Pluto to the idea of space colonization.

Edwin Forrest’s 1851 divorce trial.

On September 1st, 1858, a mob stormed the New York Marine Hospital in Staten Island, and set fire to the building.

Railroads and photography, developed largely in parallel and brought about drastic changes in how people understood time and space.