History

National

The Shipwreck That Led Confederate Veterans To Risk All For Union Lives

2:11pm April 28, 2015

by Jon Hamilton

On April 27, 1865, a steamboat named the Sultana exploded and sank while transporting Union soldiers up the Mississippi. An estimated 1,800 people died, but few today have heard of this disaster.

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President Lincoln's Cottage provided Abraham Lincoln with a refreshing escape from Washington's summer heat, but it was also the site of a painful period in Mary Todd Lincoln's life.

Books
Arts

Meet The 'Capital Dames,' Civil War Washington's Secret Power Brokers

9:21pm April 26, 2015

by NPR Staff

In her new book, Cokie Roberts explains how women like Mary Todd Lincoln and Jessie Benton Fremont influenced Washington's men of power when they weren't even allowed to vote.

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Each of the 60 paintings in Jacob Lawrence's Great Migration series is accompanied with a caption. For this panel, he wrote in 1941: "In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry."

Arts

Painting The 'Epic Drama' Of The Great Migration: The Work Of Jacob Lawrence

9:18pm April 26, 2015

by Hansi Lo Wang

A rare exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art features 60 of Lawrence's paintings about the journey of 6 million African-Americans, who fled the segregated South during the Great Migration.

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In the Roaring '20s, flappers were dancing and slang was advancing.

7 Lost American Slang Words

7:13am April 26, 2015

by Linton Weeks

Remembering cool words that are no longer cool — or even used much.

The Hooker 100-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, just outside Los Angeles. Edwin Hubble's chair, on an elevating platform, is visible at left. A view from this scope first told Hubble our galaxy isn't the only one.

Hubble's Other Telescope And The Day It Rocked Our World

12:36pm April 25, 2015

by Joe Palca

Amid this week's hoopla celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope, don't forget the clever astronomer for whom the space scope was named. In the 1920s, he changed our sense of ourselves and the universe.

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The 1956 film Giant was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won a Best Director Oscar for George Stevens. Above, James Dean sits on set with Robert Marquez, left, and Joe Vasquez of Marfa, Texas.

Arts

Marfa's Mexican-Americans Remember 'Giant' And Southwest Segregation

2:15am April 25, 2015

by Tom Michael

The documentary Children of Giant tells the story of some of the people in the 1956 film — not James Dean or Rock Hudson, but rather the Mexican community that appeared in it.

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Allied troops at the ANZAC Cove in the Gallipoli peninsula, during World War I. Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand fought for nine months but could not defeat the Ottomans. Overall, a half-million were killed or wounded.

World News

Remembering Gallipoli, A WWI Battle That Shaped Today's Middle East

11:14pm April 24, 2015

by Peter Kenyon

The clash at Gallipoli was one of the most memorable fights of World War I — and one of the most consequential. Its reverberations are still felt to this day in the chaotic Middle East.

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World News

Keith Murdoch, Father Of Media Baron, Disclosed Disaster At Gallipoli

6:55pm April 24, 2015

NPR's Robert Siegel interviews Australian journalist Peter FitzSimons, author of Gallipoli, about how Keith Murdoch defied military censors and got the word out about how badly the battle was going.

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An illustration of noblemen enjoying a feast outdoors, from a French edition of The Hunting Book of Gaston Phebus, 15th century.

Arts

Sexy, Simple, Satirical: 300 Years Of Picnics In Art

4:32pm April 24, 2015

by Tove Danovich

From Goya to Banksy, artists through the centuries have tackled modernity and its discontents through depictions of eating outdoors.

(Left) This is one of two cameras that the telescope originally carried, and it has since been replaced with a more up-to-date version. (Right) Workers study Hubble's 8-foot main mirror. After launch the mirror was found to have a problem, which astronaut

After 25 Years, The Hubble Space Telescope Still Wows Humanity

4:26pm April 24, 2015

by Geoff Brumfiel

Launched shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Hubble telescope isn't showing its age. Astronomers and other fans hope this old charmer will be useful for many years to come.

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