Topic

History

A collection of 463 issues

The First Cut: How a Surgical Tool for Childbirth Became the Chainsaw

Before its growl echoed through forests, the chainsaw's ancestor was a delicate, hand-cranked instrument invented in the 1780s. Its purpose was not to cut wood, but to aid in desperate childbirths by surgically severing the pelvic bone.

History Inventions & Discoveries Medicine

The Grimy, Soapy, Unlikely Origin of Play-Doh

Before it was a childhood icon, Play-Doh was a putty invented in the 1930s for a grimy purpose: cleaning coal soot from wallpaper. This is the story of how a failing household product was saved from obsolescence by a nursery school teacher's brilliant idea.

Inventions & Discoveries Business & Economics History

Hiroshima's First Survivor Was a Tree

Just 370 meters from the atomic bomb's hypocenter, a weeping willow was blasted to a charred stump. But from its resilient roots, new life emerged, transforming a single tree into a global symbol of peace and life's refusal to be extinguished.

History Science & Nature Wars, Conflict & Heroes

The Cold War's Unlikeliest Weapon Was a Paint Splatter

To combat the rigid propaganda of Soviet art, the CIA secretly turned American abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock into cultural weapons, funding traveling exhibitions to showcase a vision of freedom the artists themselves never knew they were promoting.

Art, Culture & Design History Politics & Power

The Tyranny of Thinness: How Gold's Atomic Dance Reshaped Art and Physics

A single ounce of gold can be hammered into a translucent sheet covering hundreds of square feet. This extreme malleability, born from its unique atomic structure, not only allowed artisans to gild the world but also provided the crucial material for revealing the atom's nucleus.

Science & Nature History Inventions & Discoveries

The First Chiropractor Got His Big Idea From a Ghost

Millions of people see chiropractors for back pain, but few know its founder claimed the entire practice was revealed to him by the spirit of a doctor dead for 50 years, an origin that explains its contentious place in modern medicine.

History Medicine, Psychology & Health Oddities & Curiosities

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