Atlas Obscura: The Instant Pot of the 1600s Was Known as ‘the Digester of Bones’
The pressure cooker led directly to the invention of the steam engine.
Atlas Obscura: "The Day Americans Drank Breweries Dry"
Eight months before Prohibition officially ended, the country celebrated “New Beer’s Eve.”
Atlas Obscura: "19th-Century Museums Swapped Priceless Artifacts Like Trading Cards"
Victorian curators filled holes in their collections by exchanging “dupes.”
Literary Hub: "The Unlikely Pulp Fiction Illustrations of Edward Hopper"
How famed realist Edward Hopper came to illustrate five issues of Adventure magazine.
Atlas Obscura: "Meet Hercules, One of America’s Early Celebrity Chefs"
Heralded for his food, the enslaved cook headed the first presidential kitchen.
Gizmodo: "The Surprisingly High-Tech Super Bowl I Broadcast"
The Technology Behind CBS' Super Bowl I Broadcast
Vice: "Historians Are Calling Out Trump Online Whenever He Misreads the Past"
Engaging with new media is no longer a dalliance for the history profession in the misinformation age.
Atlas Obscura: "How a Thirst for Portuguese Wine Fueled the American Revolution"
Madeira taxes stoked tensions, then paid for the war.
Atlas Obscura: "The Battle Between Baseball and Cricket for American Sporting Supremacy"
We could have had a very different World Series.
Vice: "How Dictionary Editors Find Meaning in the Age of Internet Speak"
Is it the modern lexicographer’s job to protect the English language, or to document it?
The Awl: "The Curious Case of Thomas Hogg"
A tragically named Puritan who stood trial for allegedly siring demonic piglets.
The Washington Post: "Voter suppression is ingrained in our national DNA"
Americans have been trying to keep their opponents from voting for three centuries.
The Awl: "Do As Poor Richard Says, Not As He Does"
From whom, how, and why Benjamin Franklin plagiarized his famous proverbs
The Awl: "Incorrigible Sin"
The story of a seventeenth-century fornication trial in Massachusetts Bay
The Public Domain Review: "The Price of Suffering: William Pynchon and The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption"
The story of America's first banned book.