History

Promo image for Malaria Animation video post.

On Orders From Mao, Researchers Set Off On Nobel-Winning Drug Work

7:34pm October 05, 2015

by Adam Cole

In the 1960s, Chairman Mao Zedong ordered scientists to find a malaria antidote to help ailing soldiers in North Vietnam. Today's Nobel Prize for medicine went to one of those researchers.

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National

Rare Film Is Glimpse Of A Distant America

3:22am October 03, 2015

by Linton Weeks

Like a time slingshot, the 1920 silent movie The Daughter of Dawn transports us back to another era — and another.

'Uniquely Nasty' Remembers The U.S. Ban On Gay Federal Workers

7:01pm October 02, 2015

NPR's Robert Siegel talks to Michael Isikoff and Charles Francis about their documentary Uniquely Nasty, which explores the government's campaign against gay workers starting in the 1950s.

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An elaborate buffet at the Ellicott Club in Buffalo, N.Y., circa 1901.

National

How Many Daily Meals Did We Once Eat?

1:31pm September 30, 2015

by Linton Weeks

Traditionally, the three daily meals in America are breakfast, lunch and dinner. But did our forebears eat four times a day instead of three?

Arts

With Her Camera, MacArthur 'Genius' Tells An African-American Rust Belt Story

7:09pm September 29, 2015

by NPR Staff

Photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier is the third generation of her family to grow up in Braddock, Pa. For years, she says, African-American contributions to the town have been "overlooked and ignored."

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the 24 award winners this year.

Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates Among 2015 MacArthur 'Genius' Award Winners

2:14pm September 29, 2015

by Laura Wagner

Representing fields from chemistry to poetry, the 24 MacArthur Foundation Fellows will each receive $625,000 over the next five years.

Sour cherry pie: one of the many beautiful marriages of sour with sweet.

Health & Safety

Power Of Sour: How Tart Is Reclaiming Turf From Sweet

5:43pm September 28, 2015

by Jill Neimark

Americans once made sour drinks like shrubs and switchels and preferred tart strawberries and cherries. Then sugar became cheaper and ubiquitous. Now sour is returning in fermented foods and drinks.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini holds his son, Romano, on his shoulders in 1935. After his father died, Romano went on to become a jazz musician.

What's It Like To Be A Dictator's Kid? 'They're All Marked,' Author Says

7:43am September 26, 2015

by NPR Staff

In Children of Monsters, Jay Nordlinger looks at the lives of, among others, Romano Mussolini, Saif Al-Islam Gadhafi and one man who claimed to be Hitler's son.

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In Stonewall, actor Jeremy Irvine (right) plays a fictional high school student from Indiana who throws the brick that starts the Stonewall riots.

The Big Question Behind 'Stonewall' Backlash: Who Threw The First Brick?

2:17pm September 25, 2015

by Hansi Lo Wang

In reality, no one knows who threw the brick that started the riots; but in a new film, it's a white teenager from Indiana. One activist says that "whitewashes" the history of Stonewall.

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Mississippi state Sen. David Jordan, who was a college student in 1955, remembers the relaxed atmosphere in the courtroom during the trial. "Even the jury were laughing," he says.

National

6 Decades Later, Acquittal Of Emmett Till's Killers Troubles Town

2:16pm September 25, 2015

by Debbie Elliott

The murder of the 14-year-old black boy and subsequent trial before an all-white jury was an early landmark in the civil rights movement.

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