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50 illustrations
In 1829, Felix Mendelssohn traveled to Berlin to conduct a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion — a masterwork that had been virtually...
In 1939, Marian Anderson was one of the greatest contraltos the world had ever heard. Conductor Arturo Toscanini declared she possessed "a voice heard once...
At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond had one goal: a 400-meter medal. He'd trained for this moment his entire life, battling through...
In 2003, scientists completed the Human Genome Project, mapping the entire sequence of human DNA. What they discovered is staggering — every single cell in...
In 2001, Allen Iverson stood before the media after carrying the Philadelphia 76ers to the NBA Finals almost single-handedly. He was five feet eleven inches...
In the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, visitors walk a long hallway lined with four unfinished marble sculptures by Michelangelo. Known as the Prisoners or the...
In 1968, a young woman named Roberta Flack was working as a music teacher in Washington, D.C. She played piano at a small club called...
In 2006, Japanese scientist Dr. Shinya Yamanaka made a discovery that would earn him the Nobel Prize. He found that a fully specialized adult cell...
When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a doctor's error left her permanently blind. The world would have written her story in a single word:...
In 1957, astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and his colleagues published a landmark paper explaining how the elements inside our bodies were forged inside dying stars. The...
For nearly forty years, a massive block of Carrara marble sat neglected in a cathedral workshop yard in Florence. Two sculptors had already tried and...
When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a doctor's malpractice left her permanently blind. The world would have written her story in a single word:...
In 1822, Charlotte Elliott was thirty-two years old and chronically ill — bedridden for months at a time, questioning her worth, her faith, even her...
In 1892, Francis Galton published his landmark study *Finger Prints*, mathematically demonstrating that no two people on earth share the same fingerprint pattern. The odds...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean spends nineteen years in prison, reduced to a number: 24601. When he's finally released, he carries that number...
In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, a selfish boy named Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard, clutching a golden bracelet,...
In Margery Williams' beloved children's story *The Velveteen Rabbit*, a stuffed toy asks the old Skin Horse a question that haunts every human heart: "What...
In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, the boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his...
In the 1950s, Mahalia Jackson was the most celebrated gospel voice in America — the "Queen of Gospel," sought after by European concert halls, the...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean is a man defined by a number. Nineteen years in prison for stealing bread have reduced him to...
In 1892, Sir Francis Galton published his groundbreaking work on fingerprints, demonstrating what forensic science has confirmed ever since: no two human fingerprints are identical....
When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a man posing as a doctor applied the wrong poultice to her infected eyes and left her permanently...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean has spent nineteen years in prison. When he is finally released, his yellow passport marks him as a...
Every iPhone ships with a unique identifier burned into its hardware at the factory — Apple calls it a UDID. You cannot change it. You...