When Josephine Anderson, a formerly enslaved Floridian, was visited by a white government interviewer in the fall of 1937, she told him a ghost story. Anderson described to Jules Frost a “white man” ...

Noah Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806. His 1828 follow-up contained 70,000 entries. By 1864, the collection had 114,000 ...

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News,Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images.

The Internet, we’ve been told, is the greatest library in the history of man—immediate, boundless, constantly expanding. In practice, though, many of us experience the Internet more like history’s ...

Wikimedia Commons/White House Historical Association It’s a familiar chapter in our history, part of the triumphant narrative of westward expansion: In 1803, the United States bought a massive chunk ...

Citizen Kane’s Xanadu fell into disrepair before it was ever finished. Hogwarts is now a tourist trap in Florida. Even Eloise’s quarters at the Plaza Hotel have recently been relocated to Brooklyn. Of ...

Courtesy of V&A Museum. If you live in Europe or the Americas, you likely pick up a fork every day and give no thought to it, unless you’re selecting flatware for a wedding registry or you happen to ...

In 1996, the New Yorker published “Hating Hillary,” Henry Louis Gates’ reported piece on the widespread animosity for the then–first lady. “Like horse-racing, Hillary-hating has become one of those ...

Phineas and Ferb creators Dan Povenmire, left, and Swampy Marsh at their Disney Television Animation offices in Glendale, California. Photo by Valerie Macon courtesy Disney XD One night in a Pasadena ...

Following the news in 2014 is a bit like flying a kite in flat country during tornado season. Every so often, a whirlwind of outrage touches down, sowing destruction and chaos before disappearing into ...

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 4: Jumpin’ Salty in the O Mike Vuolo Mike Vuolo is a radio and podcast producer and the host of Lexicon Valley. Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in ...

Welcome to Slate’s celebration of all the things that went right this year! Good news is hard to find. One of journalism’s most important jobs is to call out what’s wrong with the world so we know ...