History

Are We Living In An Unprecedented Age Of Terror?

6:58am July 01, 2016

It seems attacks are happening at a more furious pace than ever before. Georgetown Security Studies professor Daniel Byman tells Steve Inskeep that there were many more incidents in the '70s and '80s.

In District Merchants, Akeem Davis plays Lance, a freed slave who has a crisis of conscience when he learns his boss, Shylock, may have been involved in the slave trade.

Arts

This Shakespeare Reconstruction Sets 'Merchant' In Post-Civil War D.C.

6:34pm June 30, 2016

by Elizabeth Blair

In District Merchants, Shylock is still Jewish, but half of the other characters are freed slaves. The playwright says he was inspired but a reference to slavery in Shakespeare's original text.

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Prohibition-Era Gang Violence Prompted Congress To Act On Gun Control

4:26pm June 30, 2016

In the 1930s, the United States government was absorbed with a different kind of gun violence: prohibition-era gangsters using fully automatic weapons of war, with civilians often caught in the crossfire. NPR looks back at how the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, passed the nation's first firearms legislation, which still holds today.

Ancient Pay Stub Shows Workers Were Paid In Beer

7:01am June 30, 2016

The British Museum has a 5,000-year-old tablet from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk that is likely a pay stub. Historians say beer at that time was thick and starchy — basically liquid bread.

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This is where the Burning Brigade was housed. The apparatus in the middle is not the original, but ones like it were used as ramps so that the bodies could be stacked high and set alight. All the pits at Ponar were originally dug by the Russians to store

Researchers Uncover Long-Lost Tunnel Used By Jews To Escape Extermination Pits

5:42pm June 29, 2016

by Merrit Kennedy

They have provided physical evidence to a famous story of heroism during the Holocaust — known before only through the testimony of the 11 Jews who escaped a Lithuanian massacre site.

In 'Hustling Hitler,' A Jewish Vaudevillian Scams The Third Reich

4:38pm June 28, 2016

It seems everyone has one: the eccentric relative much gossiped about. For Walter Shapiro, it's his great-uncle, Freeman Bernstein. The vaudeville manager, boxing promoter, card shark and stock swindler managed to scam the Third Reich. Shapiro writes about this in his new book, Hustling Hitler.

An illustration shows spikes of different types of wheat: (1) Polish wheat (2) Club wheat (3) Common bread wheat (4) Poulard wheat (5) Durum wheat (6) Spelt (7) Emmer (8) Einkorn.

Nothing Says 'Hip' Like Ancient Wheat

4:17pm June 27, 2016

by Natalie Jacewicz

Many consumers in North America and Europe are willing to pay a premium for nutritious, organic grains. That makes the market ripe for a revival of millennia-old bread wheat, some plant breeders say.

Donald Trump delivers the convocation at Liberty University on Jan. 18. The flamboyant, thrice-married mogul has never been an easy fit with the religious right.

As Trump Defies Expectations Of Faith, Might We Be Entering A New Era?

12:56pm June 26, 2016

by Tom Gjelten

Voters have long demanded that their presidential candidates demonstrate outward signs of religious faith. So far in 2016, that may be changing — though some evangelicals are uneasy at the prospect.

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World News

'Battle Of The Somme' Centenary Symbolizes Great Loss For Canadians

7:59am June 26, 2016

Most of Newfoundland's regiment was wiped out the first day of the Allied offensive on the Somme. NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks to Maureen Power, a curator at the provincial museum about their legacy.

The Noordbrabants Museum's Hieronymus Bosch exhibition was so popular that the museum kept the show open around the clock for its final weekend.

Arts

Hieronymus Bosch Died 500 Years Ago, But His Art Will Still Creep You Out

7:59am June 26, 2016

by Vicki Barker

Known by some as "the Devil's painter," Bosch depicted imaginary animals and souls being violently tortured. At least one critic believes he's the father of modern art.