Perfectly Awesome

Alan Lomax was a legendary collector of folk music, author, broadcaster, oral historian, musicologist, and filmmaker who raised the profile of folk music worldwide.

“As a doctor, she had already faced misogyny in the French medical corps. But she persevered. It would be no different for her as a rescue pilot.” By Charles Morgan Evans AT A remote French...

On a calm, clear day, USAir Flight 427 suddenly nosedived and smashed into the earth, killing everyone on board. A team of investigators quickly assembled to sift through the rubble.

Rats are less pestilent and more lovable than we think. Can we learn to live with them?

Claims that a recent undersea discovery may be Amelia Earhart’s long-lost aeroplane raise questions. Experts weigh in on the mystery that continues to captivate us.

Ada Blackjack was an Iñupiaq woman who married at 16 and had three children before her husband abandoned her. Only one child survived infancy, and he suffered from tuberculosis. Blackjack walked 40 miles to Nome, Alaska, carrying her son Bennett in order to place him in an orphanage, because she couldn't afford his medical treatment. She desperately wanted him back, and that's why she signed on to the doomed 1921 expedition that Vilhjalmur Stefansson organized to explore the possibility of a colon...

A lifetime after the Holocaust, a few of its perpetrators remain at large. German detectives are making a final push to hunt them down.

A classic ghost story has something to say about America—200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.

There was a flash of blue and a surge of radioactive heat. Nine days later, Louis Slotin was dead.

A tale of disaster, survival, and ghosts.

The fragrant fruit hid a dark secret.

On November 28, 1787, His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty set sail from England with 46 men aboard, bound for the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, her mission was to collect and deliver breadfruit plants to the West Indies, where they would serve as cheap food for slaves on British plantations. After a long [...]

Tomb raiders, crooked art dealers, and museum curators fed billionaire Michael Steinhardt’s addiction to antiquities. Many also happened to be stolen.

Kaminsky bought chemistry books from bouquinistes along the Seine and taught himself to make explosives. But when a man...

Paul Laurence Dunbar became the first Black writer to earn international acclaim through his poetry, essays and musical lyrics.

Most mammals, including our closest living relatives, have fur. So why did we lose ours?

The modern world uses shocking amounts of steel.

The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler [Hager, Thomas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

His daring raids in World War I made him a legend. But in the Middle East today, the desert warrior’s legacy is written in sand

Scientists are grasping for any example that could help anticipate the future of Covid, even a mysterious respiratory pandemic that spread in the late 19th century.

Over the course of his chariot racing career, Gaius Appuleius Diocles won almost 60,000 lbs of gold. What did he do with it? Who knows.

A new film stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, the all-woman army of the African kingdom of Dahomey

Before the industrial revolution, there had been a significant increase in machinery use in Europe. Why not in China?

The story of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table has captivated us for a thousand years. But is there any truth behind the tales?

The most important lessons from history are the takeaways that are so broad they can apply to other fields, other…

The story of Josephine Baker.

It has often been described as a “miracle” that most of Denmark’s Jews escaped the Holocaust. Now it seems that the country’s Nazi rulers deliberately sabotaged their own operation.

Fifty years ago, a minor league game in Midland was postponed for the rarest of reasons—a swarm of grasshoppers biblical in its proportions.

Hidden in the tusk of a 34-year-old mastodon was a record of time and space that helped explain his violent death.

Jumbo Floating Restaurant, which closed in 2020, capsized in the South China Sea after being towed from the city. The sinking triggered nostalgia for a happier period of Hong Kong history.

An ex-Soviet state’s national myths—as well as the forces of nationalism, economics, culture, and religion—all pull it away from Moscow. Can Russia really compete?

Recorded during several hedonistic months in a fabulous Cote d’Azur villa, Exile on Main St is seen as the Stones’ epic, creative peak. As the classic album turns 50, stars tell us how it got their rocks off

How the impeccably credentialed, improbably charming economic historian supplanted the dirtbag left.

A strong national identity is essential for any country's survival – and the easiest route to acquiring one is to unite behind a common enemy.

This article is taken from the March 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issue for just £10. If you’ve ever wondered how letters were…

In 1944, the USS Johnston sank after a battle against the world's largest battleship. More than 75 years later, her wreck was finally located, 6km (3.7 miles) below the waves.

The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery

In 1708, the Spanish galleon San José sank in a deadly battle against English warships, taking with it billions in treasure. Centuries passed until a secretive archaeologist found the wreck, but now nations are again warring over who may claim the gold and glory.

For millennia, people slept in two shifts – once in the evening, and once in the morning. But why? And how did the habit disappear?

Biscuit-whisperer Erika Council honors the women who taught her to bake a perfect biscuit.

The year's most exciting discoveries include a Viking "piggy bank," a lost Native American settlement and a secret passageway hidden behind a bookshelf

Due in large part to Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills, a Georgia optometrist, and several members of what's known as the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation (yes, that exists), Carolina Gold rice is back, allowing a new generation of home cooks to experience what real Lowcountry cooking was meant to taste like.

Hulu’s “The Great” offers an irreverent, ahistorical take on the Russian empress’ life. This is the real history behind the period comedy.

Josephine Baker next week will become the first Black woman and first American to be honored with enshrinement in Paris' Pantheon.

Inside the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit

58 musicians showed up for a picture that captured the giants of jazz

From the docks of 12th-century Genoa to the gambling tables of today, risk is a story that we tell ourselves about the future

A whistleblower puts his life on the line to defy Soviet aggression. Over sixty years later, this forgotten story of subterfuge, smears and suspicious death has never felt more timely.

Heinrich Himmler sent a team of five Germans to Tibet in 1938 to pursue the Aryan race myth.

From the depths of poverty, Du Yuesheng rose through Shanghai’s underworld to become one of the most influential, and overlooked, figures in modern China.

Behind the American Museum of Natural History’s most venerable artifact is the shameful tale of a relentless explorer and a young boy’s torturous journey from Greenland to New York.

European ideas of African illiteracy are persistent, prejudiced and, as the story of Libyc script shows, entirely wrong

In 1721, London was in the grips of a deadly smallpox epidemic. One woman learned how to stop it, but her solution sowed political division.

Tom Brown's retirement hobby is a godsend for chefs, conservationists, and cider.

Dubbed the Ravens, misfit American pilots in Vietnam learned they could fly, fight, and drink as they pleased in a CIA-sponsored secret war. Just one catch: They answered to General Vang Pao.

Doesn’t look like much, does it? But, depending upon your definition, this photograph, a team effort by 9 men, is the most honored picture in U. S.

The mission, still a secret to this day, was so dangerous many men bid emotional goodbyes...

The plan to kill Osama bin Laden—from the spycraft to the assault to its bizarre political backdrop—as told by the people in the room.

In 1970, an image of a dead protester at Kent State became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It’s delightfully homemade-looking—like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunes—also

Scholar Monica Green combined the science of genetics with the study of old texts to reach a new hypothesis about the plague

What are the greatest art heists of all time? See a list of the 25 most memorable thefts from museums.

America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told

After Kenya declared independence from British rule in 1963, there came a flood of renamings. Schools, suburbs, and roads were rechristened in ways that spoke to a new idea of what it meant to be…

The skills behind the legendary sharpness of wootz steel were once forgotten, but Andy Extance talks to the researchers unsheathing its secrets

[caption id="attachment_80535" align="aligncenter" width="576"] The Tahiti, seen here sailing on San Francisco Bay, was a 124-foot brigantine built by Tur...

Alexander the Great’s death is an unsolved mystery. Was he a victim of natural causes, felled by some kind of fever, or did his marshals assas­sinate him, angered by his tyrannical ways? An autopsy…

This quixotic colonial barrier was meant to enforce taxes.

Robert Ballard has found the Titanic and other famous shipwrecks. This month his crew started trying to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries.

On August 23rd, the day after Dietrich von Choltitz dispatched Rolf Nordling to contact the Allies, Hitler sent a message to Field Marshal Walther Model and von Choltitz demanding that Paris be hel…

A short story by Arna Bontemps Hemenway

The International Spy Museum details the audacious plan that involved a reclusive billionaire, a 618-foot-long ship, and a great deal of stealth

Kahve was a favourite drink of the Ottoman Empire’s ruling class. Little did they know it would one day hasten the empire’s demise

Thanks in part to the work of Hanns Scharff and a slew of studies on interrogation techniques, we know it's best to be genuinely friendly no matter who you're trying to get information out of.

In The First Conspiracy, thriller writer Brad Meltzer uncovers a real-life story too good to turn into fiction

Charged with manslaughter, the owners were acquitted in December 1911. A Smithsonian curator reexamines the labor and business practices of the era

"The dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect, as if they had anticipated the kind of fate he was preparing for them."

We’ve all seen Ansel Adams’ luscious black-and-white images of Yosemite. Lesser known are his pictures of life in World War II-era Los…

From cold cuts to cold case.

How to make the trip from Sijilmasa to Oualata, circa 1352.

The most consequential military engagement in Southeast Asia in the 20th century is the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It was fought ostensibly between the French and the communist-led Vietmin at Dien Bien Phu, an obscure valley bordering China, in the remote northwestern part of what was then French Indochina. The battle ended with a humiliating defeat for the French, which brought down the French government, ended French colonial rule in Asia, ushered in America’s epic military involvement in the region for decades to come, and fundamentally changed the global geostrategic landscape.

When the Great Depression put Plennie Wingo’s bustling Abilene cafe out of business, he tried to find fame, fortune, and a sense of meaning the only way he knew how: by embarking on an audacious trip around the world on foot. In reverse.

Many of us now use the word hobo to refer to any homeless individual, but back in the America of the late 19th and early 20th century, to be a hobo meant something more.

Did members of a powerful society of warlocks actually murder their enemies and kidnap children?

Cost cuts, stressed employees, intercompany rivalries, dirty floors, dusty rafters, glitchy IT, fudged metrics: The people who ran the failed toy retailer's stores know what went wrong.

A strange and bittersweet ballad of kidnapping, stolen identity and unlikely stardom

Many Indian dishes can be traced back, indirectly, to a 16th-century, food-obsessed ruler named Babur.

A peek inside the revelry and rivalry of Texas's fat men's clubs.

Because sometimes you have to fact-check your grandmother