HISTORY

Lawn darts were banned in 1988, but not before seriously injuring many children and killing at least one.

Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ is a deceptively simple portrait of lust and love. But beyond that glittery gold leaf, the work is full of fascinating facts. 

Novelists have used everything from real killers to newsworthy hostage situations to literal white whales to craft their fiction.

The Backstreet Boys’ 1999 smash “I Want It That Way,” which celebrates its 25th anniversary in April 2024, is among the definitive songs—if not the definitive song—of the ’90s teen-pop explosion.

Turning into a werewolf was a popular pastime in 16th-century France.

From Elvis Presley wearing a velvet suit to meet Richard Nixon to the migrant mother who unwittingly became the face of the Great Depression, these are the true stories behind a few iconic photographs from history.

It took more than 70 years and tons of volunteer labor to create “the definitive record of the English language”—including an assist from a murderer. Get to know the Oxford English Dictionary better.

Here’s how a wave of mysterious deaths in the late 1970s and early 1980s among Southeast Asian refugees living in America inspired Wes Craven to pen his 1984 horror classic, “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

The word ‘yo’ was around long before Rocky movies and rap songs.

The best documentaries prove that truth is not only stranger than fiction—it's frequently more entertaining.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, robbing graves of their corpses for dissection at medical schools was an all too common practice—and sometimes, enraged citizens rose up in protest.

The rich history of the English language is full of similar directional words that are cool but uncommon, like ‘pancakewards,’ ‘couchward,’ and ‘pocketwards.’