Laser guns have long been a staple of science fiction. Now Chinese researchers claim to have developed a portable laser rifle. It sounds truly horrific; it does not kill, but can set fire to clothes ...

The Great Depression was a period of unparalleled economic privation in the United States, but it was also a peak for labor unions. Yet the rise of the working class also coincided with a surprising ...

Three nineteenth-century memoirs reveal the risks and rewards of life on the road as a traveling bookseller.

In 1829, hundreds of spinners and weavers had gathered at the Norfolk Arms Hotel when the floor collapsed under them. In the tumble, the crowd fell two stories, all the way into the cellar. Thirty ...

After genocide decimated the country’s musicians, old recordings helped a new generation reconnect with Cambodia’s musical past.

Cuentos de Eva Luna (The Stories of Eva Luna) is South American writer Isabel Allende’s love letter to One Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights). Published in 1989 as a sequel to the ...

On the Scottish island of Iona, two saints were trying to found a monastery. Every day, the workmen would lay the stones of the foundation. Every morning, they would return to find the last day’s work ...

Women have mined for centuries, but laws barring them from the industry helped cement the idea that mining was men’s work.

Today internet porn is the subject of constant argument and frequent media attention. Yet, outside of specific venues like sex advice columns and some religious communities, there’s an odd lack of ...

Trees of the genus Pisonia are not your average tree. They seem like something that would be at home in Middle Earth, or maybe Harry Potter’s wizarding world. The genus is not fully understood, even ...

Hofstra University’s historic photographs capture Hempstead’s shops and streets before postwar development transformed Long Island.

“American Buddhism” can mean a lot of different things, from silent retreats geared toward tech CEOs to longstanding congregations embedded in Asian immigrant communities. And ’twas ever thus: ...