Retropod

When author Ernest Hemingway killed himself in 1961, the political strain between the United States and Cuba was escalating. In the midst of that struggle, Hemingway's widow scrambled to recover the author's work from his beloved home in Cuba.

In 1939, an unknown copy editor from Washington, D.C., begged famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design his family a home. The result was a modern house that stood decades ahead of its time.

The world watched Notre Dame as it burned in April. But the cathedral has endured a lot in its 856 years.

Beginning in the earliest days of baseball, fans, journalists and even physicists disputed whether or not pitchers could make a ball curve.

While on a research trip to the Arctic in the early 20th century, scientist Clarence Birdseye — a name you might recognize from the frozen food aisle — made an observation that would go on to change the way we eat.

In the 1950s, millions of people suffered from measles every year. David Edmonston, an 11-year-old student, became the cure.

The nurse who founded the American Red Cross had no formal training in medicine. She tended to countless wounded soldiers.

Every year, freshmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis take part in an annual tradition where they must climb a 21 foot high obelisk covered in vegetable shortening and place a hat at the very top.

More than a decade ago, bestselling historian David McCullough stumbled upon an important name from the past that even he’d never come across before. What he discovered was the story of pioneering American idealists.

In the 1950s, Charles Van Doren, a quiet professor in New York City, became wrapped up in one of the biggest television quiz show scandals in history.