Culture

With roots in race and gender discord, has the “tomboy” label worn out its welcome?

Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer lived in an open lesbian relationship and helped found the field of home economics.

Seventy-four years ago today, lawmakers passed an amendment to the U.S. Flag Code.

“Yes, Virginia” is the most reprinted newspaper piece in American history, and this guy wrote it.

How postwar Christmas embraced spaceships, nukes, and cellophane.

Subterranean metaphors have been a powerful tool of political resistance. Today, is there anywhere left to hide?

A researcher in Boston discovers that the beloved Christmas favorite was first performed in a Boston minstrel hall.

There are two critical periods for Christmas. One is the Victorian era. The other is the 1960s.

Why Pilgrims would be stunned by our "traditional" Thanksgiving table, and other surprising truths about the invention of our national holiday.

In the 1820s, Sarah Hale, a New England widow and the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book made it her mission to get Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday.

The nineteenth-century bourgeoisie used morality to assert class dominance — something elites still do today.

An interview with horror historian David J. Skal.

Johnny Appleseed was based on a real person, John Chapman, who was eccentric enough without the legends.

In the 1970s and 1980s, homeowners were terrified by the idea that they didn't own the land they'd just bought.

In 1956, Ed Sullivan showed America what nuclear war looks like. We were never the same again.

Blackboards will endure as symbols of learning long after they’ve disappeared from schools.

And how the Rolling Stones, a band in love with black music, helped lead the way to rock’s segregated future.

How an African instrument got a racist reinvention.

How “Vaudeville’s worst act” fought for fame and respect on the stage.

A new documentary explores the infamous 1968 dispute between William Buckley and Gore Vidal.

Urban elites with a fancy hobby teamed up with rural farmers in a movement that transformed the country.

Hamilton is less a new vision of the past than a translation of the sacred stories of American civil religion into the vernacular.

The 1850s were a turning point for globalization, from telegraphs to colonization.

The history behind the photographs on Colin Kaepernick’s T-shirt.

Is blues music a thing of the past? A festival in Memphis featuring musicians of all ages and nationalities shouts an upbeat answer.

True Crime is having a renaissance with popular TV series and podcasts. But the history of the genre dates back much further.

How the Eighteenth Amendment fueled America’s taste for ice cream.

They called her ACM, but never, ever, to her face.

Two former anti-doping professionals think the fight against performance-enhancing drugs is doing more harm than good.

Since the 1920s, “highway hypnosis” has lulled drivers to disaster.