In the 1950s, there was a real danger afoot. The Communists, as our brave senators warned us, had infiltrated the governments of the democratic world. And they’d brought with them their most powerful weapon: the gays. As Senator Kenneth Wherry told the American people, “Only the most naive could believe that the Communists’ fifth column

The comma is a punctuation mark of mystery. Its precise origin is unknown, and debating its current meaning is practically a full-time job for self-appointed grammar police. However, English majors are far from the only ones affected by the comma. The US government pays millions of dollars in extra taxes because of bad grammar. Rappers

“What happened to your second wife?” an interviewer once asked Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He was referring to Sara Northrup, the woman who’d been at Hubbard’s side while he developed Dianetics and who later divorced him in a messy, public scandal. The whole world had watched their divorce fill the headlines of every paper.

Fossils are all we have to prove that dinosaurs ever existed. There are two types of fossils. The first are body parts like bones and teeth that we often associate with fossils today. The second are traces like teeth marks, footprints, and excreta. Over the years, we have unearthed some really interesting fossils frozen in

The Rajneesh movement made its way to Oregon in 1981 and was led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The religious cult made national news after engaging in immigration fraud, busing homeless people to their commune, and perpetrating the largest bioterrorism attack in US history in an attempt to overthrow local government leaders. The group had several

Growing up in the United States, you learn about all the big, quintessentially “American” sites and structures from a very early age. You’re told that they are important and given a vague explanation of why. Then you set about the task of never really thinking about them again. That’s a shame because they can be