Becky Little

To craft legal discrimination, the Third Reich studied the United States.

The filibuster has blocked voting reform, anti-lynching bills and an amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

The president and Congress clashed over welfare, crime, defense spending and whether to fund Contras in Nicaragua.

Every president since Kennedy has carried the nuclear football, but none have ever used it.

Terrifying clowns like Pennywise are way older than you might think.

People were outraged when teenage boys vandalized towns on October 31, 1933—so they found a way to keep them inside.

Ian Fleming’s cunning action hero reflected the (former) glories of imperial Britain.

Why go to the trouble of tracking and killing an animal when a saber-tooth cat can do the job instead?

From Asia to the United States, 'eighth wonders' span the globe.

It killed 100,000 people in the direct impact. But it led to tens of millions more deaths later.

The U.S. Weather Bureau got the forecast completely wrong.

Category 5 hurricanes pack the strongest winds but only a handful have been recorded making landfall in the United States.

The first recorded hurricane forecast was issued by a Jesuit priest in 1875. A series of critical tools have since refined the science.

Missionaries laid the foundation for communities and governance in the American frontier.

Feral swine. Rodents of unusual size. And a python that swallowed three deer.

Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, is primarily celebrated by followers of the Hindu, Sikh and Jain faiths.

The tri-colored confection was designed to look like chicken feed and came out at a time when about half of Americans worked on farms.

Long before MS-13, Bobby Kennedy battled J. Edgar Hoover to take on the Mafia.

Holmes allegedly killed as many as 200 by luring visitors to his lair during the Chicago World's Fair.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrates the history and contributions of Native Americans.

Government shutdowns can trigger painful economic consequences—and they only began happening in recent decades.

Ancient people may have been crafting an archetypal villain.

President Harry Truman established the medal, which was then expanded to honor Americans for a wide range of service and achievements.

Horace Mann championed the common school movement to give all children an equal education.

Radar, computers, penicillin and more all came out of development during the Second World War.

Josephine Garis Cochran had no formal mechanical engineering education, but she designed, built, marketed and sold her dishwashing machine back in the 1880s.

A key ingredient in the flavor was discovered on ancient pottery shards in Indonesia, revealing it has been around for a long, looooong time.

'We pledge to never leave a fallen comrade behind,' says one of the survivors.

The concept of a third world war has been around for a long time—not as something that might happen, but something that <em>will</em>.

Some of the oldest known art may hint at the beginning of language development, while later examples portray narratives with human and animal figures.

Jackson said he should’ve hanged his vice president, Truman called Nixon 'a no-good lying bastard.'

The trial raised questions about the First Amendment and exposed a culture clash in America.

It took an influx of dam workers, exiled Los Angeles gambling operators and mob figures to build 'sin city.'

They offered Londoners music, spectacle and social escape.

The man who invented the Frisbee used to throw cake pans with his wife on the beach.

Newt Gingrich was offended that Clinton hadn't talked to him on Air Force One.

A priestess named Enheduanna claimed authorship to poetry and other texts—sometimes in first-person—more than a millennium before Homer.

More than fifty years later, people are still trying to match the bizarre accident that was Woodstock ‘69.

And why they’re probably not going anywhere.

Social Security differed from other New Deal programs in that it wasn’t a short-term solution to the Great Depression. It was a long-term investment.

Barbie may be the star of the Mattel doll line, but she has had many friends along the way.

In 1929, Section 1325 criminalized undocumented immigration for the first time. Its aim was to decrease Mexican immigration.

Hollywood blacklisted these screenwriters, producers and directors for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Lotteries helped build libraries, roads and even Harvard.

State constitutions were rewritten to suppress the votes of newly enfranchised African Americans.

Some undid the work of their running mate, others bolstered their ticket.

The Hoover Dam, LaGuardia Airport and the Bay Bridge were all part of FDR's New Deal investment.

Gertrude Ederle slathered herself in grease, wore a controversial two-piece bathing suit and ate chicken legs along the way.

Our closest human relatives were shorter and stockier than us, and had no chin.

Long before it got its name, Gerrymandering was already happening in the United States.