Apr 15 World witnesses Notre Dame Cathedral fire with shock and horror By Associated Press As the flames tore through the 12th-century cathedral, Spain's prime minister offered France the help of his country in the recovery. Continue reading
Mar 24 What caused Harry Houdini’s mysterious death? By Dr. Howard Markel He may have escaped his dangerous feats, yet his death has remained a source of conjecture among both magicians and surgeons. Continue reading
Feb 28 The ‘awful’ work of the real doctors who inspired M*A*S*H By Dr. Howard Markel The people in MASH units worked long hours and endured horrific stresses of warfare. Continue reading
Feb 22 Watch 3:55 How The HistoryMakers strives to share the African-American experience This weekend, many PBS stations will air “An Evening with Ken Chenault,” a special about the man who was chairman and CEO of American Express for 17 years. It was created by The HistoryMakers, a Chicago-based oral history project collecting… Continue watching
Feb 18 WWII sailor in iconic Times Square kiss photo dies at 95 By Associated Press In one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, George Mendonsa kisses Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse's uniform, on Aug. 14, 1945, the day Japan surrendered to the United States. Continue reading
Jan 09 Why we still need paper maps By Vicky Stein "Maps can take you places that you wouldn’t think to go," said Betsy Mason, coauthor of the book "All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey."… Continue reading
Dec 17 How a strange rumor of Walt Disney’s death became legend By Dr. Howard Markel When you hear "Disney on Ice," you may think of the wildly popular ice shows featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse and others skating in hockey arenas across the nation. But there's also the disturbing urban legend that Walt Disney’s corpse… Continue reading
Nov 24 Watch 5:42 Museums are curating an era of social movements in real time By Ivette Feliciano, Zachary Green As Black Lives Matter protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in D.C. sent curators to collect t-shirts and gas masks -- artifacts it could… Continue watching
Nov 13 Watch 7:07 Why a library fire feels like an ‘attack on humanity’ By Jeffrey Brown In April 1986, fire raged through the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, damaging or destroying more than a million books. Journalist and author Susan Orlean resurrects this nearly forgotten story in “The Library Book,” which also explores the emotional… Continue watching
Nov 05 Watch 6:57 In ‘These Truths,’ historian Jill Lepore weaves in underappreciated political stories A new, single volume of history sets out to explore the experiment in government that is the United States. Jeffrey Brown sits down with award-winning Harvard historian Jill Lepore, author of “These Truths: A History of the United States,” to… Continue watching