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58 illustrations
In 1974, Swedish biochemist Tomas Lindahl made an unsettling discovery: human DNA is chemically unstable. Every cell in your body experiences tens of thousands of...
There’s a story that unfolded in a small town about a man named Sam, who had spent years struggling with his pride. Sam was a talented mechanic, known for his exceptional skills. One day, he received an unexpected challenge—his reputation...
In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond was considered a medal favorite in the 400-meter semifinal. He had trained for this moment his...
In 1967, Johnny Cash crawled into Nickajack Cave along the Tennessee River, intending never to come out. Years of amphetamine and barbiturate addiction had hollowed...
When Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750, the world shrugged. His music was considered old-fashioned, overly complex, and within a generation his manuscripts gathered dust...
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with catastrophic force, flattening 230 square miles of old-growth forest in minutes. Everything was buried under ash...
On April 14, 2019, Tiger Woods stood on the eighteenth green at Augusta National and did something the world had stopped believing was possible. He...
In September 2005, Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans in ruins. Nearly 1,800 people died, and 80 percent of the city flooded. The New Orleans Saints,...
The 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Derek Redmond of Great Britain had trained his entire life for one moment — the 400-meter semifinal. Years of surgeries and...
In the summer of 2021, the world watched Simone Biles — the most decorated gymnast in history — walk away from the Olympic team final...
In 1989, surgeons at the University of Chicago attempted something that had never been done before. Dr. Christoph Broelsch removed a portion of a mother's...
In 1985, scientists Joseph Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin published findings that stunned the world: a gaping hole had opened in the ozone layer...
By the early 1990s, Johnny Cash was a man the music industry had discarded. Nashville had moved on. His record label dropped him. Decades of...
In 1741, George Frideric Handel was a broken man. The composer who had once dazzled the courts of Europe now faced crippling debt. His operas...
When NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990, it was supposed to be humanity's clearest window into the heavens. Instead, the first images...
In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the rail of a ship crossing the Atlantic and stared into the water below. The captain had quietly...
When fire swept through Notre-Dame cathedral in April 2019, the world watched the spire collapse and feared the worst. But deep inside the nave, the...
In 1737, George Frideric Handel collapsed. A stroke paralyzed his right side, and doctors feared the fifty-two-year-old composer would never play again. Though he eventually...
In 2015, Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a discovery that upended what biologists assumed about life: DNA, the molecule...
In 1985, three British scientists — Joseph Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin — published findings that stunned the world. A hole had opened in...
By 1993, Johnny Cash was a man the music industry had discarded. Nashville had moved on. His record label dropped him after decades together. Addiction...
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with the force of five hundred atomic bombs, flattening 230 square miles of old-growth forest in minutes....
In 1892, German surgeon Julius Wolff published a principle that still guides orthopedic medicine today. Wolff's Law states that bone adapts to the stresses placed...
In 2015, Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a discovery that had puzzled him for decades: how do our cells...