Read: Articles from Origins

Nuuk, Greenland skyline with the aurora borealis.
Greenland Fantasies

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
The mushroom cloud from a 1954 high-yield thermonuclear weapon test.
Learning to Love the Nuclear Pariah: From China to North Korea
Title page of the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, 1818.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
President Richard Nixon
Republican Character
Black Panther
Searching for Wakanda: The African Roots of the Black Panther Story
Soldiers marching in front of the memorial - The Motherland Calls in Volgograd.
Living in History: Stalingrad at 75
W.E.B. Du Bois c. 1911
150 Years Since the Birth of W. E. B. Du Bois
An image of Kuwait’s oil fields after they were set ablaze by retreating Iraqi soldiers during the First Gulf War
Oil Empires and Petro-Anarchies
Views of the White Tower in Thessaloniki, Greece.
A Postcard from Thessaloniki, Greece
Portrait of Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre, c. 1779
The Execution of Louis XVI
A shopkeeper sits outside his store in the Cardo waiting for tourists and residents to stop in.
A Postcard from Jerusalem
American Flag with 15 stars
Best in History Online: The Washington Post's "Made By History"
KKK Rally
From Dixie to the Third Reich
Sexing History Logo
Best in History Online: Sexing History Podcast
Nationalist police forces in Barcelona preventing voting in the October 1, 2017 referendum.
Top Ten Origins: Catalonia (Catalunya) and Spain
Dr. Aleš Hrdlička
“No law can change our blood"
"Glory to victorious Red Army soldier!" by Dmitrii Stakhievich Moor, 1920
The October Revolution in Russia
A child working in a Congolese gold mine in 2009.
A New Congo Crisis?
This painting, which dates from 1859, reimagines the toppling of the equestrian statue of George III in New York City. Erected in 1770, the statue featured the regent garbed in Roman military regalia on horseback, in the fashion of Marcus Aurelius. It is doubtful that Native Americans, women and children were in attendance at this episode of iconoclasm by the Sons of Liberty.
Ten Memorable Monument Takedowns in History
A 2017 protest over a monument on the campus of the University of North Carolina.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Confederate Monuments
Abovian Among the Kurds, painting by Mkrtich Sedrakyan, 1950. (Image from author's personal collection, courtesy of the Khachatur Abovian House-Museum, Yerevan, Armenia.)
Top Ten Origins: Russia’s Relations with the Kurds
coast of Maine
Environment: Today and Yesterday
Red and yellow test tubes on cover of Health Technology and Science ibook
Health, Technology and Science: Today & Yesterday
Refugees crowded emergency trains leaving to India or Pakistan c. 1947-1953
India-Pakistan Partition
Queen Elizabeth I in Parliament
The Pandora’s Box of Religious Pluralism in the English Reformation
Iceberg, St. Lunaire.
A Postcard from Newfoundland
Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Ten Protests in Sports History
Three soldiers at an observation station on the Western Front in 1918.
The Long Legacy of World War I
A memorial dedicated to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) in Yaroslavl.
From Kulikovo Field to Kursk: Russia’s Forever War
The Biosphere 2 complex is an earth system science research facility near Tucson, AZ.
Colonizing Mars: Practicing Other Worlds on Earth
We Are Our Mountains (Tatik u Papik) Monument, Stepanakert.
A Postcard from Nagorno-Karabakh
1864 depiction of the Fort Pillow Massacre in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
Ten Moments of White Supremacist Violence in U.S. History
“Aux amateurs de physique.” Likewise portraying the Tuileries flight, this cartoon mocks the unwashed masses who wished to see the spectacle without a ticket, but the scaling of the garden walls also illustrates how the balloon as a “people-machine” ignited the determination of the poorer, disempowered social strata to overcome restraints imposed on them by the authoritarian regime.
Public Perceptions: Ballooning and Political Culture
Portrait of Martin Luther
Martin Luther and the Reformation
Interstate 80 near Berkeley, CA.
How Public and Private Enterprise Have Built American Infrastructure
Soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad
Stalingrad at 75, the Turning Point of World War II in Europe
1960s hippies dancing at a festival.
The Soundtrack of the Summer of Love
Rio's Ipanema Beach
A Postcard from Brazil: The Old Struggle for a Better Future
The BBC World Service podcast Witness brings listeners daily podcast shorts on key events in history, described first-hand by the individuals who lived through them.
Best in History Online: BBC's Witness Podcast
This is the third Strasbourg astronomical clock which is located in the Notre-Dame Cathedral and was built in 1843, the first clock was built 1352-1354.
Paleotechnic Machines in the Middle Ages
Richard and Mildred Loving
Interracial Marriage in "Post-Racial" America
Under Attlee's direction, the Labour Party's position on foreign affairs in the 1930s was somewhat inconsistent. A believer in the "collective security" represented by the League of Nations, Attlee opposed rearmament even as he pushed for firmer measures against Nazi aggression.
A Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing