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194 illustrations
In the summer of 1924, the fastest man in Britain faced an impossible choice. Eric Liddell, Scotland's star sprinter and heavy favorite for Olympic gold...
In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond lined up for the 400-meter semifinal as one of the favorites. He had trained his entire...
Every device connected to the internet carries two kinds of identity. There is the IP address — temporary, assigned by whatever network you happen to...
At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond was considered a medal contender in the 400-meter semifinal. He had spent years clawing back from...
In 1924, Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell arrived at the Paris Olympics as the fastest man in Britain. He was the heavy favorite in the 100...
By 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven was losing the one thing that defined him — his hearing. The composer who had dazzled Vienna was going deaf....
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 1822, a young Englishwoman named Charlotte Elliott sat across from the evangelist César Malan at a dinner party in Geneva. She was restless, battling...
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 2005, stem cell biologist Jonas Frisen at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm made a remarkable discovery. By measuring traces of carbon-14 left over from...
In February 2012, Jeremy Lin was sleeping on his teammate's couch in New York City. The Harvard graduate had gone undrafted and been cut by...
In 2005, stem cell biologist Jonas Frisén at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm made a remarkable discovery. Using carbon-14 traces left in the atmosphere by...
In 1772, John Newton sat down to write a hymn for a New Year's prayer service in the small English village of Olney. The words...
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...
Every smartphone carries a hidden number called an IMEI — a fifteen-digit code burned into the device's hardware at the moment of manufacture. You can...
For decades, geneticists referred to roughly 98 percent of human DNA as "junk" — vast stretches of genetic code that appeared to serve no purpose...
In 2005, stem cell biologist Jonas Frisen at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm developed an ingenious method using carbon-14 from Cold War nuclear testing to...
In 2005, stem cell biologist Jonas Frisén at Sweden's Karolinska Institute used carbon-14 dating — the same method archaeologists use on ancient artifacts — to...
Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old when a careless doctor applied a mustard poultice to her infected eyes. By every measure of...
For decades, geneticists believed that 98 percent of human DNA was junk — meaningless leftovers with no discernible purpose. They called it "junk DNA," and...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean has spent nineteen years in prison. When he is finally released, he carries a yellow passport that marks...
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...
For decades, Johnny Cash lived as a man at war with himself. He was the outlaw and the altar boy, the pill-popping rebel and the...