Protections and regulations around contraception and abortion have been subject to laws and legislation in the U.S. since the 1800s. Prior to 1821, abortions were generally accessible and were often performed by midwives, as well as doctors. That changed as women’s reproductive ...read more

On December 11, 1978, six masked, armed men burst into the Lufthansa Airlines cargo terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport during a graveyard shift and robbed $5.8 million in cash and jewels, the largest heist in U.S. history at the time. No shots were ...read more

After the American Revolution, a divide between the North and South began to widen. Industrialized northern states gradually passed laws freeing enslaved people, while southern states became increasingly committed to slavery. Many southerners came to view slavery as a linchpin ...read more

When Maya Angelou published 1969’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the bestselling autobiography that would be adapted into a television movie and make her a household name, she was already in her 40s with a variety of career experiences. Angelou was an actor, dancer, activist ...read more

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, famously (and fictitiously) said, “When one door closes, another opens.” Put another way, even a failure or a dead-end can lead to something great. For proof of Bell’s maxim, look no further than the seven inventions below, all ...read more

Ancient Greeks and Romans placed immense importance on the pageantry and competition of sport, transforming modest playing fields into a connected network of stadiums designed to honor the gods and affirm their power. The stadiums’ extraordinary designs have inspired new ...read more

Why rob banks? Because that’s where the money is. It’s a saying often inaccurately attributed to U.S. bank robber “Slick Willie” Sutton, but it’s true. Banks have historically been big targets for robbers because of all the money in their vaults, as well as all the jewelry, stock ...read more

Each year, Jews around the world celebrate an eight-day winter holiday known as Hanukkah (also spelled “Chanukah” and several other ways) on the 25th day of the month of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, typically falling in November or December on the Gregorian calendar. Hanukkah ...read more

Formation of the Soviet Union On November 7, 1917, Bolshevik forces led by the Marxist ideologue Vladimir Lenin and his compatriots Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, seized power in the Russian capital, Petrograd. What followed was a protracted and bloody Russian civil war that ...read more

In 1945, J.D. and Ethel Lee Shelley, an African American couple, purchased a home for their family in a white St. Louis, Missouri neighborhood. Problem was: In selling the modest, two-story brick dwelling to a Black family, the home’s white owners had defied a 34-year-old ...read more

The Victorian Era, which spanned the length of Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901, was a period of rapid economic and social change, driven by the Industrial Revolution. This had profound impacts on every industry—including fashion. As clothing became cheaper and faster to ...read more

Less than three weeks after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans celebrated their first Christmas of World War II. On the surface, it didn’t look much different than it had in previous years, as the bulk of the men and women who would serve overseas had not yet ...read more