On June 15, 1904, a steamship called the General Slocum left the pier on East Third Street in New York City just after 9 AM. The boat was filled with more than 1,300 residents of the Lower East Side. Many of the passengers were recent German immigrants who were headed up the East River for a church outing, a boat cruise and picnic on Long Island. They would never make it.

We interviewed the last survivor of the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon, when she was 100 years old. Today, we’re bringing you her story.

This story originally aired on NPR in 2004.

Only one human disease has ever been completely eradicated: Smallpox. Smallpox was around for more than 3,000 years and killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century. Then, by 1980, it was gone.

Rahima Banu was the last person in the world to have the deadliest form of smallpox. In 1975, Banu was a toddler growing up in a remote village in Bangladesh when she developed the telltale bumpy rash. Soon, public health workers from around the world showed up at her home to try to keep the virus from spreading. This is her story.

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This episode of Radio Diaries has support from GreenChef. Go to GreenChef.com/diaries130 and use code diaries130 to get $130 off, plus free shipping.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal throughout most of the country. But that doesn't mean women didn't get them.

In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help pregnant women get abortions. At first, they connected women with doctors willing to break the law to perform the procedure. Eventually, they were trained and began performing abortions themselves. The group called itself “Jane.” Over the years, Jane performed more than 11,000 first and second trimester abortions.

You probably don’t know her name, but you definitely know her songs. Rose Marie McCoy would’ve turned 100 years old today. On this episode of the Radio Diaries Podcast, we’re remembering the woman behind smash hits by Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross and many others.

Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were both born in New York City and adopted as infants. When they were 35 years old, they met and found they were “identical strangers.”

This story originally aired on NPR in 2007.

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Today’s episode is supported by Green Chef. Visit GreenChef.com/diaries130 and use code diaries130 to get $130 off, plus free shipping.

Sofia Bretl has lived in New York City for the last decade. But she was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, about 25 miles from the Russian border. The city has received some of the worst shelling so far in the war. That’s where her mother lives. As conditions in Kharkiv worsened, they faced a difficult choice.

This week, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and failed to pass antilynching legislation more than 200 times over the course of more than a century.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is named for a 14-year-old boy whose murder 67 years ago shocked the nation. Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family when he was kidnapped, horribly beaten, and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie river. Today, Emmett Till’s death is considered the spark that ignited the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

But few people know about another brazen murder of a Black man that happened just three months later, in a neighboring town in the Delta. Today on the Radio Diaries Podcast, we tell the forgotten story of Clinton Melton.

This episode first aired on NPR in 2020.

Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL. 66 years later, Colvin’s fighting to get her record wiped clean.

Nowadays we’re very accustomed to recording and hearing the sound of our own voices. But in the 1930s many people were doing it for the first time. And a surprising trend began. People started sending their voices to each other, through the postal service. It was literally voice-mail.

We combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters have the same subject matter: love.

This story originally aired on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2018.

You can see photographs of the voice-o-graphs on our website: https://www.radiodiaries.org/voicemail-valentine-2022/.

When we first met Majd Abdulghani, she was a teenager living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most restrictive countries for women in the world. She wanted to be a scientist, her family wanted to arrange her marriage.

Majd recorded her life over two years, she was one of our most prolific documentarians. With her microphone, Majd brought us inside a society where the voices of women were rarely heard.

Majd is 27 now. A lot has changed in her life. Today, we bring you a brand new conversation with Majd and her original story from 2016.

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Today’s episode has support from GreenChef. Get $130 off when you use code diaries130 at check out.