Mathematician, engineer, physicist, and inventor Ayrton received recognition for her first invention at a British exhibition, and many more inventions followed. Read about her work on ripples and the electric arc and her award for making her ideas heard.
Usually books inspire plays and movies. However, the smash Broadway musical Hamilton, based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, inspired a book that details the play’s social and cultural significance.
This article examines playwright Eugene O’Neill’s impact on American theater.
In this opinion piece, Bob Gibson, the executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia, argues that James Madison serves as a unifying figure in a divisive political climate.
In 1995, Oseola McCarty donated $150,000, the majority of her life savings, to The University of Southern Mississippi. The donation made a huge impact on the lives of the African-American students from southern Mississippi who received scholarships to study at the University.
This article compares the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley to the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age.
Film critic Richard Brody reviews a new biopic about poet Emily Dickisnson, who was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, and lived most of her life there.
Nearly two centuries ago, the daughter of the poet Byron pursued a very different line of interest, one that has led to her being called the world’s first computer programmer.
Vasco da Gama, a 16th century Portuguese explorer, was the first European to reach India by sea. In 1998 archaeologists first discovered a shipwreck that is believed to be from da Gama’s second voyage to India. Browse through the photos of treasures found on the wreck and when you’ve finished reading the article click on the link How Satellites Find Shipwrecks From Space.
Read this biography of Virginia lawyer, politician, and statesman Patrick Henry, an influential leader in the forming of the United States.
Vincent Van Gogh turned his failure as a rural preacher into the art that makes him revered as an innovator today.
Read this interesting account of the eight people in hiding in the Secret Annex from the perspective of Miep Gies and compare it to Anne Frank’s account.
Horace King, a freed slave in early 1900’s was known for his sophisticated bridge-building technique. With the man who freed him, John Goodwin, he built covered bridges across what became the Confederate States of America.
An acclaimed American poet, Robert Frost didn’t have any of his work published until after he was 40 years old. He went on to receive much recognition and many awards, including four Pulitzer Prizes.
Read about the successes and setbacks Samuel F. B. Morse encountered while inventing the telegraph.
Chances are, if you’ve seen a Civil War-era photograph, it was credited to photographer Mathew Brady. However, that photo was most likely actually taken by Alexander Gardner, who went on to document the American West.
Rising from poverty in St. Louis to become an entertainment superstar in her adopted home of Paris, Josephine Baker could easily have enjoyed a life of leisurely wealth. Instead, she aided the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of World War II and later spoke out for American civil rights.
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge, led by the dictator Pol Pot, took over the southeast Asian nation of Cambodia. The regime uprooted and destroyed countless lives, killing nearly two million of its own people. Cambodians today have yet to come to terms with the horrors of that time.
Publishers have been cranking out editions of Shakespeare’s works for hundreds of years. So what makes an ordinary 1970 edition, pasted with pictures and marked with handwritten notes, so special?
On January 1, 70 years after her death, Anne Frank’s diary (in the Dutch language) was available free to download, read, and distribute.
