Nicolaus Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres revived the notion of a heliocentric universe first advanced around 250 BC by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus.

Swimming, a sex chair, and anchoresses.

May 24 Today is my eighteenth birthday! How old! And yet how far am I from being what I should be. I shall from this day take the firm resolution to study with renewed assiduity, to keep my attenti

Richard Strauss offers tips for young conductors.

Fighting fakes with facts is hard work.

Several years ago I found a dusty book in a used bookstore that had been inscribed as a gift to Ricardo in 1979: “Happy B-day to my favorite horror show lover, off-off-Broadway musician, and a wonderf

Princess Victoria—sometimes “naughty and vulgar”—grows up.

When the young poet Alexander Pope submitted his satire of Chaucer’s “House of Fame” to Richard Steele, The Spectator editor wrote back that he saw “in it a thousand thousand beauties.”

Food flinging as protest, now and then.

Deep thoughts on prominent bellies from Ancient Greece and Rome.

Born in 1806 to Scottish historian, philosopher, and economist James Mill, John Stuart Mill was given a rigorous and extensive education by his father, learning Greek by age three and algebra by age…

How cartography made early modern global trade possible.

At the age of seventeen, Nathaniel Hawthorne mused to his mother about the possibility of “relying for support upon my pen.”

T.E. Lawrence worked for British military intelligence in Cairo in 1915, joining Prince Faisal’s army as a political and liaison officer in 1916.

Toward a history of creativity and beef.

Artists who overcame physical disabilities.

In his autobiography, Russell described the three passions that governed his life as “the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

Although his family name means “tent maker,” Omar Khayyam became a mathematician and an astronomer, completing an important treatise on algebra in Samarkand and conducting celestial observations

One of Jameson’s most famous books was completed when she was forced to relocate to Toronto, where she wrote Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada.

Hobo college, the women of Homer, and lots of lox.

Lewis H. Lapham talks with the author of War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945.

From the invention of coinage to the present day, each technological innovation in currency has further expanded money’s role in our lives.

Frederick A. Cook endures three months of Antarctic night.