While the United States was still deeply divided over slavery, John Brown forced the moral crisis to its boiling point and accelerated the nation on its road to war. Called a martyr, freedom fighter, and madman, his actions are still debated.
For National Library Week, we asked four law librarians to profile one unexpected item from their collections, an odd, overlooked treasure, the item that made someone say, “We need to save this,” if only because it sparked some bibliophile joy.
In the 1950s, thalidomide was a popular sedative marketed to pregnant women worldwide as an allegedly safe way to relieve morning sickness. In reality, it was far from harmless.
What do Cornell University, Kansas State University, and Florida A&M University have in common? They are three of the hundreds of land-grant universities in the United States.
Is it possible to commit a perfect crime? In 1924, two gifted teenagers, Leopold and Loeb, tried to prove they could, with horrific results.
What would you do if you were wrongly convicted of a crime? What if you were wrongly convicted twice? For Alfred Dreyfus, this was not a hypothetical situation.
Facing Congressional scrutiny, in 1954 the comic book industry adopted the Comics Code to self-censor the content published in comics. The Code remained in effect for nearly 60 years.
New York State described the end of the uprising at Attica Correctional Facility as “the bloodiest 1-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.” In this post, we explore the uprising’s origins, its deadly conclusion, and aftermath.
In 1978, the federal government nearly decriminalized marijuana—until a White House drug scandal vanished those plans in a puff of smoke.
As Texas City longshoremen labored on the morning of April 16, 1947, they had no idea their cargo—all 2,300 tons of it—was so dangerous. The packaging only said “fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate.”
