Science

In 1910, a failed House bill sought to increase the availability of low-cost meat by importing hippopotamuses that would be killed to make "lake cow bacon."

Botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter braved rapids and steep cliffs to catalog numerous plant species.

Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.

Forget changing only the names that honor the horrors of the past. Some biologists now argue no species should ever be named after a single individual.

Debating the meaning of gender is hardly new, but the clinical origin of the word may come as a surprise.

Coca-Cola has made ambitious climate and sustainability pledges, but marketing its products worldwide will always be a top priority.

In 1928, two Americans invented a large metal breathing device that would become synonymous with polio treatment.

Apples no one has ever tasted are still out in the wild. Dave Benscoter, a retired FBI agent, has spent a decade searching for these 100-year-old heirlooms.

A new history of the Apple II charts how computers became unavoidable fixtures of our daily lives.

The popularity of tanning rose in the early twentieth century, when bronzed skin signaled a life of leisure, not labor.

While these pills are making headlines in the US, where a Texas judge tried to ban them, the story of their invention is often overlooked.

Already prone to boiler explosions that regularly killed scores of passengers, steamboats were pushed to their limits in races that valued speed over safety.

Pennyroyal is a species of mint with purple flowers. It smells like spearmint. And it has been used as an abortifacient for over two thousand years.

More than 30 years ago, the "French paradox" got America bleary-eyed.

Efforts to pinpoint early cases have been complicated, and in some cases compromised, by distractions and diversions.

In “Spoiled,” the culinary historian Anne Mendelson takes aim at the American fallacy of fresh milk as a wonder food.

How Black women used exercise to achieve civic goals in the late nineteenth century.

Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind.

His research ushered in the psychedelic renaissance. Now it's changing how he's facing death.

How did a field meant to reclaim genetics from Nazi abuses wind up a haven for race science?

The early republic and the seventh planet.

New research adds scientific detail to Indigenous narratives that tell a different story.

The IBM 7094 anticipated the future of music—and also sounded like the Auto-Tuned pop stars of today.

The death of mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe is its own mystery. But new research suggests election fraud may have contributed to his demise in Baltimore.

Rereading Priscilla Wald’s "Contagious" and Nancy Tomes’ "Gospel of Germs" amidst a 21st-century pandemic.

These scientists spent weeks underwater doing research—and convincing NASA women could also go into space.

A new book "examines legal cases of women accused of infanticide and concealment of stillbirth."

Reflecting on the trailblazing chemist’s fight for dignity and the myths we tell about our scientific heroes.

Our own world is built from copper, and so too will future worlds be.

In "The Car," Bryan Appleyard sets out to celebrate the freedom these vehicles granted. But what if they were a dangerous technology from the start?