Stuff You Missed in History Class

There's really not a lot concretely known about the life of Aphra Behn, who, in addition to being a spy, was a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator, and the first woman in English literature known to have made her living as a writer.

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Khutulun's story is a little bit cloudy, in part because it’s many hundreds of years old, and in part because accounts of her life involve a combination of propaganda and an outsider’s interpretation of it.

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Jules Cotard was the first psychiatrist to write about the cluster of symptoms that would come to be called “Walking Corpse Syndrome.” But his work was unfinished, and left a great deal of room for debate about it among his colleagues.

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This was one of the worst disasters in Texas history, the worst school disaster in U.S. history, and it was a horrific tragedy that stemmed from a huge number of small decisions and moments.

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The practice of the monarch laying on hands to cure sick people lasted from the medieval period all the way to the 18th century in Britain and France. One disease in particular was so often "cured" it came to be known as the King's Evil.

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Holly interviews Michael Bornstein and his daughter Debbie Bornstein Holinstat about their book "Survivors Club." The book chronicles the story of Michael's family during the Holocaust, and how Michael survived at Auschwitz.

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For a very short time between Edward VI and Mary I, Lady Jane was, at least nominally, Queen of England and Ireland, but whether she had any right to the title is still the subject of dispute.

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From his start as an apprentice to a nurseryman in London, John Kidwell would go on to catalyze the establishment of Hawaii’s pineapple industry. His story is tied to the white business-driven Reform Party and its coup over the Hawaiian monarchy.

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Dr. Gates joins Holly to talk about history's impact on our future, Black History Month, and his upcoming PBS series "Africa's Great Civilizations."

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Maroons are Africans and people of African ancestry who escaped enslavement and established communities in the Caribbean and parts of the Americas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jamaica's Maroon communities clashed with British colonial government.

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