What Big History Says About How Royal Women Exercise Power

Queens in many societies heavily influenced the policies and governing behavior of their kings.

The Night the Music Died

Fifty years ago, a plane carrying Buddy Holly crashed in a remote Iowa cornfield. This month, hundreds of fans will gather at the ballroom where he played his final show to sing, dance, and mourn the greatest rock star ever to come out of Texas.

What I Learned in Avalanche School (Published 2019)

I wanted to be prepared for the worst nature could throw at me. But the real threat turned out to be human.

The Doctor, the Dentist, and the Killer

Brenda thought she and Ricky would be together forever, until he left her. Kendra thought she and Ricky would be together forever. Then Brenda took matters into her own hands. Inside the case of jealousy, spying, and murder that shook Uptown Dallas.

Mecca 1979: The mosque siege that changed the course of Saudi history

An armed takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca put a halt to the modernisation of Saudi society.

What It’s Like to Live in a California Ghost Town

To be an off-season caretaker of Bodie, California (winter population: 5), you need a high tolerance for cold, solitude, and two-hour grocery runs.

In the Jungle: Inside the Long, Hidden Genealogy of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonigh

How the American music legends behind 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman named Solomon Linda who died a pauper.

Miss Girard’s Christmas Gift

When her former student was found wandering the streets a decade after she’d last seen him, Michell Girard immediately agreed to take him in. Then she decided to do far more, including give him the Christmas he’d never had.

A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52

The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Orchids

Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it's a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.

Out of Water

The sea of simpler songs only the drowned and the fish know to sing.

Queens of Infamy: Njinga - Longreads

The Portuguese colonizers of West Central Africa learned it the hard way: you mess with the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba at your own peril.

The Story of a Great Monopoly - The Atlantic

”These incidents in railroad history show most of the points where we fail ... to maintain the equities of ‘government’—and employment—‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’”

Ghost ships, crop circles, and soft gold: A GPS mystery in Shanghai

A sophisticated new electronic warfare system is being used at the world’s busiest port. But is it sand thieves or the Chinese state behind it?

The Cry of Alice

The Terrewode Women’s Community Hospital is the happy ending of a story that harkens back to a time when women’s bodies were a frontier and a commodity.

Let's Create a Simple Load Balancer With Go

Load Balancers plays a key role in Web Architecture. In this post we are going to develop a simple load balancer with power of Go

The Wild Ones

People said that women had no place in the Grand Canyon and would likely die trying to run the Colorado River. In 1938, two female scientists set out to prove them wrong.

Inside Wayne LaPierre’s Battle for the N.R.A. (Published 2019)

How an internal power struggle, a New York State investigation and accusations of fraud and betrayal on all sides have left the longtime leader of the gun-rights organization reeling.

AN41

A futuristic fiction story about war, people, and robots

Mathematical Model Reveals the Patterns of How Innovations Arise

The work could lead to a new approach to the study of what is possible, and how it follows from what already exists.

The Invisible Boy Who Became Mr. Invincible

One man's unlikely journey from servant and prisoner of war to bodybuilding champion—with an epic, trans-continental love story along the way.

A Doctor’s Diary: The Overnight Shift in the E.R. (Published 2019)

In the typical emergency room, demand far outpaces the care that workers can provide. Can the E.R. be fixed?

Perspective | Blight wiped out the American chestnut. Parallel efforts are close to bringing it back.

One method, the slow, methodical work of traditional hybridization, is long familiar. The other, genetic engineering, is more controversial.

Prime Power: How Amazon Squeezes the Businesses Behind Its Store (Published 2019)

Twenty years ago, Amazon opened its storefront to anyone who wanted to sell something. Then it began demanding more out of them.

How Do You Save an Endangered Tree from Extinction When You Can't Save Its

“Recalcitrant” seeds hold the secret to saving a critically endangered Indian tree—thanks to a bit of human help

The falling price of a TV set is the story of the American economy | The Ou

A 50-inch TV for $300 comes with some trade-offs.

What Ecstasy Does to Octopuses

Despite their wacky brains, these intelligent animals seem to respond to the drug in a very similar way to humans.

The Influencer and the Hit Man: How a Years-Long Domain Name Feud Ended in a Bloody Shootout

To get his URL, the founder of State Snaps turned to extreme measures

The Chinese Roots of Italy’s Far-Right Rage

The country’s new politics are often attributed to anger over migrants. But the story begins decades ago, when China first targeted small textile towns.

The Absurd Story Behind China's Biggest Bank Robbery

Two lottery-crazed clerks robbed the Agricultural Bank of China in Handan, Hebei province of over US$ 6 million

How Renaissance’s Medallion Fund Became Finance’s Blackest Box

The Medallion Fund, an employees-only offering for the quants at Renaissance Technologies, is the blackest box in all of finance.

How to Survive Solitary Confinement

An ex-convict on how to set your mind free.

Henry Lee Lucas Was Considered America's Most Prolific Serial Killer. But He Was Really a Serial Liar.

Netflix's 'The Confession Killer' examines the true story of the man who said he killed nearly 600 people.

‘It appeared that we had time’: How the FAA missed a chance to save Jennifer Riordan

The mother of two with an “amazing spirit” died after being sucked halfway out a window on a Southwest plane.

A Powerful Statement of Resistance from a College Student on Trial in Mosco

Yegor Zhukov’s message about responsibility and love shows what political dissent can be and seems to describe American reality as accurately as the Russian one.

Longreads Best of 2019: Crime Reporting

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year. Here is the best in crime reporting.

All Hail the Rat King - Longreads

From Martin Luther to The Nutcracker, Germany's original national nightmare was a tangled knot of writhing rats.

They Were the Renaissance Men of Roman Antiquity - The New York Times

Daisy Dunn’s “The Shadow of Vesuvius” is a lively dual biography of the polymath Pliny the Elder and his nephew (and adopted son), Pliny the Younger.

The Mystical, Mind-Sharing Lives of Tulpamancers

Drawing on ancient Tibetan practices and a very human need for companionship, these people believe they have figured out how to create sentient beings within their own bodies.

Coach O & The Cajun People

An exile from French Louisiana realizes that Ed Orgeron is her very own

The Startling Secret of an Invincible Virus

A phage that resists all forms of the antiviral defense known as CRISPR has an unusual means of survival.

The Resurrection of the Greatest Sci-Fi Writer You’ve Never Read

He was beloved by Neil Gaiman and Robert Jordan, and so good that he won a World Fantasy Award for a Christmas card. How did John M. Ford disappear?

Anyone’s Son

Cody Dalton Eyre, a 20-year-old Alaskan Native, was having a mental health crisis on Christmas Eve, 2017 when his mother called 911 for help. So why did police officers end up shooting and killing him?

The Hummingbird Whisperer

They’re tiny and they hover, and they’re one of only three groups of birds that are vocal learners. They sing with their mouths andtheir feathers. No wonder UC Riverside researcher Chris Clark is obsessed with hummingbirds.

Kitchen Rhythm: A Year in a Parisian Pâtisserie - Longreads

An Oxford grad learns to navigate boiling sugar, sleep deprivation, and exacting pastry chefs with whom she can barely communicate.

A ‘Thrilling’ Mission to Get the Swedish to Change Overnight

How a whole country of drivers all switched lanes at the same time.

Crossed Stitches

Beverly Pennington was a Pinterest-perfect entrepreneur whose patchwork quilts—made from people’s most treasured T-shirts—found thousands of devotees all over the country. But when the quilts stopped coming, leaving the shirts in limbo, her customers pieced together a plan to…

The First Family of Counterfeit Hunting

Robert Holmes taught his sons everything he knew about exposing black-market knockoffs. Now they take down the world’s biggest scammers while dodging threats from the mob.

Lessons From a ‘Local Food’ Scam Artist

Working summers at an authentically quaint roadside produce stand, a teenage salesperson is schooled in the not-so-subtle art of how to con a foodie from the big city.

The Real-Life Hollywood Hoax That Turned a Fake Bradley Cooper Epic Into a $14 Million Scam

Adam Joiner’s silver-screen dreams were finally coming true. He had a deal with Netflix, a superstar lead and even interest from Spielberg. There was only one problem: His entire story was a lie