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266 illustrations
In software development, there's a moment every engineer dreads — the moment you press "deploy." You've written the code, run the tests, reviewed it a...
On a sweltering July night in 1893, a young man named James Cornish staggered into Provident Hospital in Chicago with a knife wound to the...
In bone marrow transplantation, there comes a moment that defies every human instinct for self-preservation. Before a patient can receive the healthy marrow that will...
There was a humble pastor in a small town who had a remarkable gift for connecting with people. Every Sunday, he would stand at the back of the church, shaking hands and sharing hugs with everyone. One day, as he...
In the early 1990s, scientists sealed themselves inside Biosphere 2, a massive glass enclosure in the Arizona desert designed to replicate Earth's ecosystems. They controlled...
In 1612, a nineteen-year-old Italian painter named Artemisia Gentileschi stood in a Roman courtroom. She had been assaulted by a fellow artist, and during the...
In 1929, a young German surgeon named Werner Forssmann was convinced that a thin tube could be guided through a vein and into the living...
In 1977, geologist Jack Corliss and a team aboard the submersible Alvin descended nearly eight thousand feet to the floor of the Pacific Ocean near...
On July 27, 1996, the United States women's gymnastics team stood on the edge of history at the Atlanta Olympics. They had never won a...
In the summer of 2021, Simone Biles stood at the top of the gymnastics world. She was the most decorated gymnast in history, the overwhelming...
In the forests of the American West, the lodgepole pine has developed a remarkable survival strategy. Its cones are sealed shut with a thick resin...
On December 3, 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard stood in an operating room at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, preparing to attempt what...
In 2012, a young engineer at Knight Capital Group watched in horror as a software deployment gone wrong burned through $440 million in forty-five minutes....
On Easter Sunday, 1939, Marian Anderson stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial and opened her mouth to sing. She had not chosen this...
In 2010, neuroscientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel made a remarkable discovery about the human brain. Dr. Yadin Dudai and his team...
In 2012, marine biologist Dr. Edith Widder descended into the midnight zone of the ocean, more than a thousand meters below the surface, where sunlight...
In 1892, German surgeon Julius Wolff published a discovery that changed how we understand the human body. He found that bones are not static structures...
In 1892, German surgeon Julius Wolff published a discovery that still shapes modern medicine. He found that human bone is not static. It is alive,...
In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that could have ended his career. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he had...
In 1984, Australian physician Dr. Barry Marshall faced a medical establishment that refused to believe him. He and his colleague Dr. Robin Warren had discovered...
In 1984, an Australian physician named Barry Marshall did something his colleagues considered reckless, perhaps absurd. He believed stomach ulcers — long blamed on stress,...
In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Return of the King*, there comes a moment near the end of the long journey when Frodo Baggins simply cannot go...
In 1984, an Australian physician named Dr. Barry Marshall faced a problem no amount of argument could solve. He was convinced that stomach ulcers were...
In 2010, neuroscientist Yadin Dudai and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science set out to answer a question humanity has wrestled with for...