From the category archives:

History NF authors

Easier not to know?

Thumbnail image for Easier not to know?

By C. S. Manegold
ALMOST HALF a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr. captured a problem that still plagues us today. Cautioning his flock against the complacent embrace of incomplete knowledge, he warned: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’’
I have thought of those words often in the last [...]

Read the full article →

Christopher Wren and the Bees

Thumbnail image for Christopher Wren and the Bees

By Gene Kritsky
Christopher Wren (1632-1723), the architect who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, is also known for designing one of the first wooden box bee hives. Unlike the typical box hive we use today, Wren’s hive was octagonal.
In Wren’s day, beekeepers preferred to use the skep hive, an inverted basket that was fashioned [...]

Read the full article →

Prize Discovery

Read the full article →

Pie in the Sky

Thumbnail image for Pie in the Sky

By Mollie Cox-Bryan
Mrs. Rowe would never have called herself a feminist. A self-made successful restaurateur during a time when most women were still at home, who probably worked harder than any man she knew, Mildred Rowe never had the time to entertain ideas like feminism. Yet, women everywhere can look at the founder of the [...]

Read the full article →

The Pharaoh’s Underwear

Thumbnail image for The Pharaoh’s Underwear

By Daniel Meyerson
The king’s underwear or a historical document–what was in those chests?
Like a river branching into many streams, there are endless fascinating side issues related to Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb. Take the chests supposedly containing Tut’s underwear: when Carter first opened them he took the folded linen inside for [...]

Read the full article →

Henry Hudson’s Lost Voyage

By Peter C. Mancall

On April 17, 1610, the English sea captain Henry Hudson maneuvered his small ship called Discovery out of St. Katherine’s dock in London toward the Northwest Passage, the water route Europeans believed connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. On board were twenty-two men and two boys, one of whom was Hudson’s seventeen-year [...]

Read the full article →

Hendrik Cesars and the Tragedies of Race in South Africa

Thumbnail image for Hendrik Cesars and the Tragedies of Race in South Africa

By Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully
When we began researching our biography of Sara Baartman we thought we knew what we would find. Two white men brought Sara Baartman to 19th-century London, where she was put on show in Piccadilly. Every study, every bit of popular knowledge representing Sara Baartman’s life as the “Hottentot [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries