Read: Articles from Origins

Olympic Broadcasting Services covering the men's 10 kilometre marathon swim at the 2012 Olympic Games.
The Big Game on the Small Screen: The Televised Transformation of Sport

man with a gun in a holster
Top Ten Origins: Gun Regulation
protests by the Yellow Vest movement
France at the Barricades, 1934
Illustration of Packing Room in Opium Factory at Patna, India
The World of Opium: From “Free” to Illicit Trade
Chinese laborers work a sugar plantation in 19th century Hawaii.
A Sweet Beginning: the U.S. Sugar Monopoly
a rocket being launched in the Middle East
War and Geopolitics in the Middle East: Today & Yesterday
Monte Albán
A Postcard From Oaxaca, Mexico
A Hawaiian man employing the spearfishing techniques described by Fagan, circa 1890.
Built Upon Bounty
Armenian protesters in April 2018.
Dispatches from the Armenian Revolution
Tanks rolling off a German assembly line in 1943
The Nature of World War II
Political prisoners in Kengir, Kazakhstan
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks' declaration from Flag Day 1919 that forbade membership in the organization to anarchists, Industrial Workers of the World, Bolsheviks, and other organizations perceived as unpatriotic.
Sanitizing American Tradition
On August 8, 1918, 17,000 German soldiers surrendered to the Allies.
November 11, 1918: The End of World War I?
In 2011, thousands of ultra-nationalist demonstrators took to the streets of Moscow, armed with tsarist insignia and shouting the anti-immigrant chant "Let's give Russia back to the Russians!"
Russia’s Lost Empire
An influenza hospital at Camp Funston
The 1918 Flu Pandemic
H.G. Wells’s novel, War of the Worlds, described hissing, tentacled, tripodal invaders from Mars.
Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” Radio Broadcast
A sign in Zambia in 2005.
A Century of HIV
Clarence Thomas
Top Ten Origins: Controversial SCOTUS Nominees
A 2017 protest march in San Francisco calling for President Trump’s impeachment.
American Presidential Scandals
“The great financier, or British economy for the years 1763, 1764, 1765.” This British cartoon depicts the American colonies as a Native American woman, as juxtaposed to British officials and Britannia (far right), demonstrating the disconnect between the colonies and the metropole even though the colonists thought of themselves as full British subjects.
The Old Informing the New
The Temple of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá.
A Postcard From Chichén Itzá
The logo for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Genocide and Justice in Rwanda
More than just peace and love, 1968 was a global clash against political and business establishments.
Time It Was: 1968 Around the World
Demonstrators protest the judicial proceedings against suspected White Power activists following the Greensboro massacre of 1979.
"Lone Wolves" No More
Thousands of Greeks went on strike and threw stones at the police.
The Alpha and Omega of the Greek Debt Crisis
A U.S. FBI agent sorts through rubble. (Photo by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation)
The 1998 East African Embassy Bombings
The Great Mosque of Djenne. This image illustrates the influence of Islam in the region and the building style of the region. Its origins are unknown but it shows the power of the emperors who built this structure that still stands today.
A New View of West African Empires
Zombie scene from the 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead.
Top Ten Origins: Zombies: The Undead Shuffle
A 2018 Anti-War rally in Chicago.
Fear and Loathing Around the World: The Rise of the New Populism
The words "Equal Justice Under Law" which are inscribed on the front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
The Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was one of the bloodiest in history: 8 million people lost their lives in Europe's deadliest religious conflict.
Secularism, Past and Future
An artistic rendering of the observable universe by Pablo Carlos Budassi. It depicts the Solar System at the center, surrounded by other celestial bodies and galaxies, and cosmic microwave radiation and plasma left over from the Big Bang at the outer edge.
Top Ten Origins: The Universe’s Greatest Hits
An Aboriginal leader at the 13th Annual Canadian Aboriginal Festival in 2006
Canada’s Dark Side: Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s 150th Celebration
book cover of Empire of Cotton - A Global History
Top Ten Origins: Summer 2018 Must Reads
Alt-right protestors in Berkley, CA in 2017.
Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: How Neo-Nazis and Ancient Greeks Met in Charlottesville
A rendering of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, which was fought on April 12, 1864 in Tennessee. It ended with a massacre by Confederate soldiers of at least one hundred surrendered black troops serving the Union, exemplifying one of the Civil War's transgressions of the norms of warfare.
The American Civil War, Then and Now
The colorful buildings of Tirana, viewed from the steps of the National Museum.
A Postcard from Tirana: Overcoming the Past
An artist's rendering of the Tunguska event
The 1908 Tunguska Event and the Threats of Tomorrow
Billy Graham in Amsterdam in 1954.
Protestant Preaching after the Age of Graham
Woodcut print depicting the Second Defenestration of Prague in 1618
Out the Window: Religion, Politics, and a Defenestration in Prague
Mutineers in Petrograd during March 1917, shooting upon the Tsar’s police forces.
Russia’s Trial by Fire
Insulin shock therapy being administered in the 1950s to a psychiatric patient.
America's Long-Suffering Mental Health System
a Galapagos sea turtle swimming in the ocean
What’s “Natural” on the Galapagos Islands?
Print depicting the USS Olympia firing on the Spanish fleet during the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898.
Top Ten Origins: Puerto Rico and the United States
The detonation of the Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb
Top Ten Origins: Civil Defense, Nuclear War, and Duct Tape
illustration of people around a fire ring
The Causes and Costs of Barrenness
A portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A 1950s flyer describing fluoride as rat poison, the polio vaccine as a communist conspiracy to bring about socialized medicine, and mental health as a Jewish plot to imprison anti-Semites in insane asylums.
Toxic Treatment: Fluoride's Transformation from Industrial Waste to Public Health Miracle
Melvyn Bragg
Best in History Online: BBC's In Our Time