INVESTIGATION
Abraham Lincoln, a tarnished hero
Abraham Lincoln is remembered as the Great Emancipator and the savior of the Union. The fuller record — on race, on civil liberties, on the Dakota 38 — is more complicated than the monument, and considerably more interesting.
DUSTIN · NOVEMBER 16, 2019
Investigations
Were there really other presidents before George Washington? Kind of.
Men held the title ‘President of the United States’ before George Washington did. Whether they count depends entirely on which job you mean.
JANUARY 22, 2021
Misquoting Seneca: Gibbon and his Anti-Christian Rhetoric
A famous quotation about religion and government gets attributed to the wrong man, in the wrong century, making the wrong point. Checking the source is the whole story.
APRIL 24, 2021
No Death Bed Confession for Darwin
The story that Charles Darwin renounced evolution on his deathbed surfaced years after his death, from a source who was not there. The record of his final days says otherwise.
APRIL 24, 2021
Quick Questions
When does history become history? →
Why was moonshine illegal until recently? →
When and how did we domesticate cats? →
How did Romans and Greeks set up their dating system? →
Did prohibition in the US lead to lower levels of alcoholism? →
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IV · Technology & Media — The tools and channels that shape what we know, and how they shape us in return.
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