history

Nazi Germany's "Perfect Aryan" Baby Was Jewish

Andy Cush · 07/02/14 09:23AM

In the 1930s, the Nazi party began issuing propaganda featuring the image of a "perfect Aryan" child. If you were looking to build a master race of adorable white people, you could do a lot worse: Hessy Taft, the model, had round eyes, a charmingly surprised expression, and a perfectly tousled tuft of dark hair on her head. She was also Jewish.

Twenty-Five Years Later, It Is Always June 4, 1989

Tom Scocca · 06/04/14 10:32AM

On June 1, this past Sunday, police came to the Beijing home of the artist Guo Jian—an Australian citizen, living in Beijing with an Australian passport—and took him away. Two days before, the Financial Times had published an interview with Guo. In it, he talked about how he'd privately made an installation of a diorama of Tian'anmen Square, buried in a layer of ground pork, till the meat had rotted. Guo went on to tell the reporter about his own experience at Tianan'men in 1989: a hunger strike, tear gas, bullets, blood, "the emergency room packed with bodies."

Tom Scocca · 06/02/14 01:01PM

It's Jefferson Davis Day in Alabama, but the Wall Street Journal reports not everyone wants a holiday for a slave-owning traitor: "There are so many more worthy people to honor—like Waldo Semon, the inventor of vinyl," one Alabamian says. Maybe y'all can just skip the day off and work harder?

Adam Weinstein · 05/29/14 10:55AM

Paul Weyrich tried to found the political religious right in the '70s around porn, school prayer, the ERA, and abortion. "I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," he said. Then he found something that worked: Fighting for racial segregation.

Jim DeMint Says There's No Way the Federal Government Freed the Slaves

Adam Weinstein · 04/09/14 12:40PM

Jim DeMint, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation and latest spiritual guru of the tea party, told a Christian radio host last week completely un-ironically that "the conscience of the American people" freed the slaves in the 1860's, not "big government."

New Research: Nixon Wanted "Dirty Tricks" to Cover Up My Lai Massacre

Adam Weinstein · 03/24/14 02:21PM

Richard Nixon was a secretive paranoid bigoted sonofabitch. But we never knew the half of it: It turns out his administration waded neck-deep into efforts to sink a war-crimes investigation against U.S. soldiers who notoriously butchered an entire village in Vietnam.

Tom Scocca · 03/19/14 01:05PM

In celebration of its upcoming centennial, World War I killed two more people today.

The Federation of Black Cowboys Is Closed For Renovation

Ken Layne · 12/19/13 01:54PM

To reach the Federation of Black Cowboys headquarters at Cedar Lane Stables, you take the A train for about an hour out of Manhattan to the Grant Avenue station in Howard Beach, walk a mile past park-and-ride lots and construction sites and a truck selling Polish sausage, then look for the wooden rail fencing around a long and narrow stretch of trees and trailers alongside Linden Boulevard. For two decades, until the city closed the stables this year, these 26 acres of pasture, trees, and western-themed corrals provided a place for city kids to learn to ride a horse or see a rodeo.

Ken Layne · 12/10/13 06:41PM

George H.W. Bush, the 89-year-old former president, scratched "Join Twitter" off his bucket list today.

Black Florida Man Protests Union Monument by Singing "Dixie"

Adam Weinstein · 12/04/13 09:59AM

A state plan to honor Union soldiers at Florida's largest Civil War battlefield fell apart this week after "furious" pro-Confederate locals commandeered a town hall meeting, including an African-American activist who called Northern troops rapists and led the crowd in a round of Dixie.

What If Dick Cheney's First Heart Attack Had Killed Him?

Hamilton Nolan · 10/17/13 11:26AM

Dick "Dick" Cheney, the defining political figure of 21st century America, is publishing a book next week called Heart: An American Medical Odyssey, about his own health problems. Cheney had the first of his five heart attacks in 1978. What if he had not survived?