A massive trove of historic World War II documents has been unveiled, and it strikes at the heart of a generational issue in the Netherlands. On Jan. 2, the Dutch Central Archives of the Special Jurisdiction was publicly opened under the country’s national archive rules. This archive contains information about 425,000 Dutch people who were […]
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Being tied to the land—to the cycles of the crops and the seasons, to the types of soil and the temperament of the winds—is likewise part of the experience of being a Black Southerner, relating to other Black Southerners. The rifle in the Black Southern home served a dual purpose: to protect against the ever-present […]
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The Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 is one of the most famous – and infamous – psychological experiments conducted, still discussed in classrooms and pop culture more than half a century on. But “everything you think you know about this study is wrong”, filmmaker Juliette Eisner told Ars Technica. Eisner is the director of National […]
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For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. There is massive investment in AI but little clarity about what it will produce. Examining AI has become a significant part of Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s work. An Institute Professor at MIT, Acemoglu has long studied the impact of technology […]
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Migrants have become a flashpoint in global politics. But new research by an MIT political scientist, focused on West Germany and Poland after World War II, shows that in the long term, those countries developed stronger states, more prosperous economies, and more entrepreneurship after receiving a large influx of immigrants. Those findings come from a […]
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Ever since British archaeologist Howard Carter first peered into the tomb of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, 100 years ago, the mystery of the boy king’s death has captivated historians and amateurs alike. That mystery recently “took another turn”, said the Daily Express. Researchers propose that his eye-catching gold funerary mask may have been intended for […]
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In 1983, the head of the West German mission in East Berlin, Günter Gaus, described the German Democratic Republic as a “niche society.” Gaus observed that East Germans delighted in the spaces where they could fully withdraw from politics. It was “the place where they leave it all behind and, with family and among friends, […]
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In 1867, five Japanese students took a long sea voyage to Massachusetts for some advanced schooling. The group included a 13-year-old named Eiichirō Honma, who was from one of the samurai families that ruled Japan. Honma expected to become a samurai warrior himself, and enrolled in a military academy in Worcester. And then some unexpected things […]
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As a teenager living in a small village in what was then Yugoslavia, Admir Masic witnessed the collapse of his home country and the outbreak of the Bosnian war. When his childhood home was destroyed by a tank, his family was forced to flee the violence, leaving their remaining possessions to enter a refugee camp […]
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