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194 illustrations
In 1501, Michelangelo accepted a commission that other sculptors had refused. The block of marble was enormous — seventeen feet tall — but it had...
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 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...
For decades, geneticists dismissed roughly 98 percent of human DNA as "junk" — vast stretches of code that seemed to serve no purpose at all....
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 1820, six-week-old Fanny Crosby was blinded when a man posing as a doctor applied a mustard poultice to her inflamed eyes. The world would...
In 1905, hymn writer Civilla Martin visited a couple in Elmira, New York, whose circumstances could have defined them entirely by what they lacked. Mr....
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean stumbles out of prison after nineteen years, branded by a yellow passport that marks him as a convict....
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...
In 1501, a twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo stood before a massive block of Carrara marble that no one else wanted. The slab had been quarried nearly forty...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, the ex-convict Jean Valjean arrives at the door of Bishop Myriel after nineteen years in prison. The bishop feeds him,...
In 1741, George Frideric Handel was a man the world had finished with. The composer who once filled London's grandest concert halls was now fifty-six,...
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 Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean is released from nineteen years in prison carrying a yellow passport that marks him as a convict. Every...
In 2003, geneticist Francis Collins stood before the world and announced the completion of the Human Genome Project — the full mapping of human DNA....
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 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues called reckless. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky that...
In 1892, Sir Francis Galton published his landmark study on fingerprints, demonstrating what no one had proven before: no two human beings share the same...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean has spent nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. When he is finally released, he...
In 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. At fifty-six, he was deeply in debt, weakened by a stroke that had nearly ended his...
In 1835, Charlotte Elliott sat alone in her room in Brighton, England, while her family bustled downstairs organizing a charity bazaar for a local school....
In 2012, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center made a stunning discovery. Led by scientist J. Lee Nelson, the team found that during...