Feature Channels: History

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Assistant professor Sharon Moses is unearthing artifacts under former slave quarters. Her research is filling in historical gaps of slaves, including black Indians.

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The great human drama known as World War II shaped the way we see the world today and, on Friday, May 8, the world will commemorate one of the most important milestones of the conflict — the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day), which signified the end of the war in Europe. Florida State University’s Institute on World War II and the Human Experience is doing its best to preserve the countless documents, photos and artifacts that help tell the story of this monumental time in history.

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Marie Sarita Gaytán, an assistant professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Utah, noticed the distilled spirit’s rise in popularity. She turned what has become a pop culture phenomenon into a research project, which culminated into a study published recently in the Journal of Consumer Culture, “The transformation of tequila: From hangover to highbrow.” Her study examines how tequila —once considered a lowbrow drink swilled in in Mexico —has turned into the drink of choice for high society. Gaytán analyzed novels, magazines, newspapers and even song lyrics to examine the broader meaning of tequila in society to find that its evolution has been influenced by historical, political and economic circumstances. Gaytán also recently published a book, “¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico,” that builds on her research.

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This year will mark the 150th anniversary of May 20, 1865, when Union Brigadier General Edward McCook declared the Emancipation Proclamation was in effect in Tallahassee. An expert from Florida State University is available to comment on the anniversary, the Civil War and slavery.

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In her most recent book, Wild Animal Skins in Victorian Britain: Zoos, Collections, Portraits, and Maps, Ann Colley integrates 19th century interest in animal skins with contemporary thinking about skin and identity.

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Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: exercise and obesity, Focused Ultrasound to treat uterine fibroids, neurology, diet supplements and cancer (day 4 in top 10), genetics, geology, skin cancer, sleep and Alzheimer's, and water conservation.

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University of Arkansas historian Tricia Starks is using a grant from the National Institutes of Health to research and write a new book, Cigarettes and Soviets: The Culture of Tobacco Use in Modern Russia.

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A new book by the Rev. Edward R. Udovic, C.M., offers a translation of the eulogy given by Henri de Maupas du Tour and takes a snapshot of 17th century France at the time of Vincent de Paul’s death

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Why are there so few breweries in the U.S. South? A University of Louisville economics professor who has researched the issue says the reason can be traced to strong, anti-alcohol religious beliefs permeating throughout the Deep South.

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In “Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie,” WVU history professors chronicle the important role of evangelical Protestantism in the battle to unionize the South.

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Northern Europeans in the Neolithic period initially rejected the practice of farming, which was otherwise spreading throughout the continent, a team of researchers has found. Their findings offer a new wrinkle in the history of a major economic revolution that moved civilizations away from foraging and hunting as a means for survival.

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Morality is not declining in the modern world. Instead, a new morality is replacing the previous one. Centered on individual self-fulfillment, and linked to administrative government, it permits things the old morality forbid, like sex for pleasure, but forbids things the old morality allowed, like intolerance and equality of opportunity.

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As the execution of Joe Hill observes a 100-year anniversary this year, University of Utah law student Adam Pritchard this month has published a new article about the case in the Labor Law Journal. The article, co-authored with attorney Kenneth Lougee, “Joe Hill One Hundred Years Later: The Case for Reliable Hearsay Never Died,” is a historical and legal analysis of hearsay.

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This nylon jacket belonged to Cesar Chavez, a civil rights, Latino and farm labor leader who in 1962 founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, the first effective union of farm workers in the United States. His birthday, March 31, is an official holiday in 10 states.

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Esta chaqueta de nylon le perteneció a Cesar Chavez, un líder de los derechos civiles, latinos y de los trabajadores agrícolas que en 1962 fundó la unión de Trabajadores Agrícolas Unidos (United Farm Workers o UFW), la primera unión efectiva de trabajadores agrícolas en los Estados Unidos. Su cumpleaños, el 31 de marzo, es un día de fiesta oficial en 10 estados.

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Historian J. Laurence Hare, who examines the emergence of antiquarianism in the German-Danish border regions in his new book, Excavating Nations: Archaeology, Museums and the German-Danish Borderlands.

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Experiments at Z at pressures equalling when worlds collide show that iron vaporizes at far lower pressures than its theoretical value , explaining for the first time iron's widespread distribution in Earth's mantle.

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A rare copy of the Tanakh (Old Testament) that reached Israel in a circuitous fashion and was donated to the University of Haifa by the late film producer and director Micha Shagrir, was reunited with its “twin”.

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A University of Utah study of nearly 2,000-year-old livestock teeth show that early herders from northern Africa could have traveled past Kenya’s Lake Victoria on their way to southern Africa because the area was grassy – not tsetse fly-infested bushland as previously believed.

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John Calvert, Ph.D., a historian at Creighton University, discusses the foundations of Middle Eastern nationhood coming out of World War I.

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A group of Ithaca College journalism students will help NBC News cover events surrounding the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights.

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A historic event in the nation’s civil rights movement, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, occurred 50 years ago this month. The events surrounding the march eventually led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Experts from Florida State University are available to comment on this topic.

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Two URI history professors are leading practitioners of the emerging discipline of applied history, using the knowledge and wisdom of the past to help identify and address present-day issues.

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Millions of African Americans moved from the South in the early 20th century to seek better job opportunities and higher wages, but a new study on the historic Great Migration shows that with improved economic conditions came a greater risk of mortality.

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Despite notable differences in appearance and governance, ancient human settlements function in much the same way as modern cities, according to new findings by researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Colorado Boulder.

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This artwork adorns a postage stamp of Admiral Robert E. Peary and Matthew Henson that was issued May 28, 1986. A former sharecropper from Maryland, Henson participated as a navigator and translator in six expeditions to the North Pole and was Peary’s most trusted member of the expedition that discovered the North Pole.

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For the first time, grape seeds from the Byzantine era have been found. These grapes were used to produce “the Wine of the Negev” — one of the finest and most renowned wines in the whole of the Byzantine Empire

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Researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence of widespread, human-produced air pollution in South America--from the Spanish conquest of the Inca.

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The Smithsonian invites the public to celebrate Black History Month in February through a series of vibrant performances, lectures, family activities and exhibitions at various museums around the Institution. All programs are free unless otherwise indicated.

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Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was a successful, charismatic and tough gangster, but he was neither a visionary who founded the Las Vegas Strip nor a pathological killer, says Missouri University of Science and Technology historian Larry Gragg in his biography of the mobster.

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When it comes to race, too many people still mistake bigotry for science, argues Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist Robert W. Sussman, PhD, in his new book, “The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea.” The book traces racist ideas to their origin and illustrates how racist myths live on in modern society.

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Nükhet Varlik, a Rutgers historian, has studied the Black Death – the medieval plague that may have wiped out more than half of the population in vast parts of the world – and found echoes from centuries past in issues such as the spread of deadly diseases including Ebola, human interactions with the environment, climate change and other dilemmas that affect human health today as much as they did in the Middle Ages. There is much we may be able to learn about modern times from what Professor Varlik has found.

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University of Kentucky Department of Computer Science's Brent Seales is on his way to making history, and uncovering it, with revolutionary software and 2,000-year old Herculaneum scrolls.

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Thinking small has enabled an international team of scientists to gain new insight into the evolution of planetary building blocks in the early solar system.

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A team of undergraduate students from Ithaca College traveled to Washington to document President Lincoln’s Cottage — the only designated national monument in the District of Columbia — using 3D laser scanning technology.

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A West Virginia University history professor has led an international team of historians on a study of economic warfare during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The result— a collection of essays offering new perspectives on the consequences of Napoleon Bonaparte’s European conquest.

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An exploration of post-colonial attempts to develop Africa may provide understanding as the world sees the continent as the next economic powerhouse.

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As the nation pauses to recognize civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. next Monday, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor is reflecting on the country's racial history in a different way—by examining plantations.

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New research by UChicago art historian Claudia Brittenham examines the mysterious and magnificent murals at the ancient site of Cacaxtla in present-day Mexico.

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Six official clay seals found by a Mississippi State University archaeological team at a small site in Israel offer evidence that supports the existence of biblical kings David and Solomon.