When Cosimo il Vecchio was a young man, he was given a slave girl. Despite his marriage he continued to live with her, away from his family. Their bastard son, Carlo, sought his fortune in Spain and ...

Wright brothers fly first motorized plane 1903 Photo: Wright Brothers' first flight Orville and Wilbur Wright were inspired by Otto Lilienthal, a German glider pioneer. Though he crashed to his death ...

Do You Speak American? has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, promoting excellence in the humanities. Additional funding is provided by the William and Flora ...

What Does Your Speech Reveal? We use language to express our identity. Our way of speaking varies and changes to reflect who we are and who we want to be. Carmen Fought asks the provocative questions: ...

Archival maps, plans and photographs of Auschwitz have allowed researchers to make valuable insights into the history of the camp's evolution. A selection of those documents is available here.

Rachel Carson grew up on a small Pennsylvania farm, where she spent hours exploring the outdoors. She always loved books, and when she was young thought she would be a writer. Her first publication ...

Bumper and Tease: NARRATOR: Now, back to Do You Speak American? Tommy Taylor: (singing) Had a piece of pie, had a piece of pudding, well I give it all away to the other side of goodin’. NARRATOR: Down ...

Guns, Germs and Steel First published in the United States by W.W.Norton and Company, on March 1 1997, Guns, Germs and Steel was initially subtitled ‘The Fates of Human Societies.’ Within a few months ...

QUESTION: How did African Americans fare during the Great Depression and under the New Deal? WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON: During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were ...

Theodore Caplow is the Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. He is a co-author of The First Measured Century and Recent Social Trends in the United States, 1960-1990. He ...

He is the author of the prize-winning Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West and Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. He is the editor of Uncommon Ground: ...

Narrator: It is a story brought to life by their own words, and those of the ordinary men and women who have changed the course of history. In eye witness accounts soldiers ascribe the birth of an ...