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261 illustrations
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...
In 1678, John Bunyan published *The Pilgrim's Progress* from the confines of Bedford Jail, where he had been imprisoned for preaching without a license. A...
In 1987, French neurosurgeon Alim Louis Benabid made a remarkable discovery during brain surgery. While electrically stimulating a region of a patient's brain called the...
In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond lined up for the 400-meter semifinal. He had trained for years, endured twenty-two surgeries, and finally...
In the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, visitors walk a long hallway to reach Michelangelo's famous *David*. But lining that hallway are four extraordinary sculptures most...
For nearly a century, neuroscience operated under an iron law: adult brains cannot grow new neurons. The great Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal declared...
On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash walked through the gates of Folsom State Prison carrying nothing but a guitar and a setlist. He wasn't there...
In 1980, Bob Marley was dying. Melanoma was spreading through his body, and he knew his time was short. So he did something no one...
In 1748, a violent storm nearly swallowed a slave ship in the North Atlantic. At the helm was John Newton — a man so cruel...
In 1748, John Newton nearly drowned when a violent storm battered his ship in the North Atlantic. He had spent years in the slave trade,...
In May of 1738, Charles Wesley was a man who had done everything right and still felt trapped. He had crossed the Atlantic as a...
In the summer of 2021, Simone Biles stood at the edge of the Olympic vault runway in Tokyo and did something the world never expected....
On May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven stood before a Vienna orchestra to conduct the premiere of his Ninth Symphony. He had spent years composing...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean is a man crushed by his past. After nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread,...
In 1941, Henri Matisse was seventy-one years old and recovering from surgery that left him largely confined to a wheelchair or bed. The man who...
On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash walked into Folsom State Prison carrying nothing but a guitar and a voice roughened by years of addiction and...
In 2005, Dr. Sarah Sallon of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem did something no one believed possible. She took a date palm seed recovered from...
In the summer of 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer stood before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention and told the world what it cost...
In 1871, a small group of students from Fisk University in Nashville set out on a desperate singing tour. Their school was nearly bankrupt, and...
In 2014, Google engineer Tadek Pietraszek helped design a revolutionary security key — a tiny USB device called the Titan Security Key that replaced passwords...
In 1886, a young French sculptor named Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi watched as workers on Bedloe's Island removed the last wooden scaffolding from around the Statue...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean has just been released from nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He is a...
In 1905, Albert Einstein solved a puzzle that had baffled physicists for years. Scientists had been shining light on metal surfaces, expecting that brighter light...
In 1967, psychologist Martin Seligman conducted a groundbreaking experiment at the University of Pennsylvania that revealed something heartbreaking about captivity. Dogs were placed in a...