Told

A former systems operator logs back in to the original computer-based social network.

A web dictionary devoted to historical English slang—five hundred years of the vulgar tongue.

Ever since Kennedy-Nixon, televised debates have given viewers an insight into candidates' policies—and their personalities, too.

James Callender spread scurrilous rumors about Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Then he turned on Thomas Jefferson, too.

To inform its readers of a cholera epidemic, The New York Tribune published an ancestor to our current infographics.

On John Winthrop’s oft-misunderstood use of the phrase “a city upon a hill” to describe the New World.

That time Stalin coined the term “American Exceptionalism.”

Originally, the term referred to a specific kind of foreign political violence.

If a Pulitzer-nominated 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon Wood talks about pamphlets, changes in the media environment, and the current state of historical writing.

Hidden within this most pervasive mythology of the Revolution is a distortion of the Revolutionary experience.

Hushpuppies are delicious, iconically Southern, and no one seems to have a clue where they came from.

On May 10th, 1869, the entire nation was waiting for the moment a silver hammer struck a golden spike, creating the first massive breaking news story.

Covering the island has been a central concern for The Nation since the beginning—producing scoops, aiding diplomacy, and pushing for a change in policy.

An 1848 investigative news story that relied on heavy data analysis snared big fish, including two future presidents.

In the middle of the past century, a gentle crew of puppets united the TV watchers of America.

An interactive chart reveals how the words presidents use reflect the twists and turns of American history.

Gordon, Peter, Vincent Colyer, and the story behind slavery's most famous photograph.

Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?

Companies and individuals are considered grandfathered and exempt from new sets of regulations all the time. But the term and the concept dates to a darker era.

The incredible story of how a disgraced Civil War general became one of the best-selling novelists in American history.

For many of us, especially those who weren’t alive when it happened, we’re all watching that event through Zapruder’s lens.

The field of political consulting was unknown before Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker founded Campaigns, Inc., in 1933.

19th-century Americans abandoned the English phrasing of "standing" for election and begin to describe candidates who "run" for office. The race was on.

Quite the contrary. They used rhetoric to build a partisan community, and realized that parties needed to create and market identities, not simply agendas.

The CIA secretly funded the 1954 Animal Farm film, reshaping Orwell’s ending to push anti-Soviet messaging during early Cold War politics.

How the labels applied to violence abroad affect how Americans think the U.S. government should respond.

The use of the word "immigrant" in contemporary debates often reflects a lack of understanding of U.S. immigration history.

Character codes have been evolving through multiple systems over multiple centuries, this is the story.

The selling of the Iraq war.