Loading...
177 illustrations
In the summer of 2021, Simone Biles stood on the biggest stage in gymnastics — the Tokyo Olympics — and did something the world did...
In 2018, Apple introduced a feature called Screen Time that quietly tracks every minute you spend on your phone — which apps, how many pickups,...
In 1988, three hundred thousand Estonians — nearly a third of the entire nation — gathered on the Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn and did...
In the summer of 1924, Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell arrived at the Paris Olympics as the fastest man in Britain. He was the heavy favorite...
For over a century, neuroscience held an iron law: the adult brain cannot produce new neurons. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Nobel Prize-winning father of...
In the summer of 2021, Simone Biles stood on the world's biggest stage at the Tokyo Olympics and did something no one expected. The most...
For decades, the four-minute mile stood as an absolute wall in competitive running. Physicians and physiologists declared it a physical impossibility — the human body...
In the summer of 2021, Simone Biles stood on the world's biggest stage at the Tokyo Olympics — and walked away. Midway through competition, the...
In 2021, Apple rolled out a small but revolutionary feature in iOS 14.5 called App Tracking Transparency. Before it existed, hundreds of apps on your...
In April 1967, twenty-year-old Kathrine Switzer pinned bib number 261 to her sweatshirt and lined up at the start of the Boston Marathon. No woman...
Before the Civil War, enslaved men and women in the American South developed a hidden language woven into their hymns. The spiritual *Wade in the...
In January 1922, fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson lay dying in Toronto General Hospital. He weighed just sixty-five pounds. Type 1 diabetes was consuming him from the...
On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and opened her mouth to sing. The Daughters of the...
Physicists call it escape velocity — the precise speed an object must reach to break free from a planet's gravitational pull. For Earth, that number...
In April 2021, Apple released iOS 14.5 with a small but revolutionary feature called App Tracking Transparency. For years, apps on your phone had been...
For centuries, doctors believed that when a stroke destroyed brain tissue, the functions controlled by those cells were lost forever. A paralyzed hand stayed paralyzed....
When Apple releases a new iPhone, some users immediately try to jailbreak it — a process that bypasses Apple's security restrictions to install unauthorized apps...
In 1924, Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell arrived in Paris as one of Britain's greatest Olympic hopes. The 100 meters was his race — the one...
In the late 1990s, America Online dominated how Americans experienced the internet. Over thirty million subscribers logged on each day to that familiar "You've got...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean is a man crushed by nineteen years of prison for stealing a loaf of bread. When he is...
In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass recalls the moment his enslaver, Hugh Auld, discovered that Auld's wife had been teaching the...
A few months ago, I met a woman named Sarah, whose story illuminated the profound power of forgiveness. Sarah was a vibrant member of her church, deeply involved in community service and small groups. But beneath her joyful demeanor lay...
In January 1922, fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson lay dying in Toronto General Hospital. Type 1 diabetes was consuming him from the inside — his body unable...
In C.S. Lewis's *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*, Edmund Pevensie makes a devastating trade. The White Witch offers him Turkish Delight — enchanted...