A short history of leisure.

On the longstanding human fascination with a light source we could borrow but not share.

Over a million people are buried in a potter’s field on Hart Island. Here are some of their stories.

A trip to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.

It involves a former 1960s bondage film actress, a Jewish neo-Nazi, the husband of the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and a whole lot of creative marketing.

How “Count” Victor Lustig, one of America’s great con men, worked his scams.

On claiming the conquistador Juan Ponce de León as an ancestor and the fictions we tell ourselves.

On a small section of land wedged between Egypt and Sudan called Bir Tawil and the American who tried to claim it for himself.

Between 1937 and 1973, Earl Johnson served out the sentences on nine felonies, worked for Charlie “Cherry Nose” Gio, became friends with a Soviet spy, and tried to kill “Joe Cargo” Valachi of the Cosa Nostra with a poison dart.

How a detachment of U.S. Army soldiers smoked out the original Ku Klux Klan.

In 1980, four American nuns were murdered in El Salvador. This is the story of how a young American official stationed there singlehandedly found the culprits.

Excerpted from Weakness and Deceit: America and El Salvador's Dirty War

The idea was to shoot a Neiman Marcus fur catalog in the Andes mountains, not get stranded on them.

Winona Ryder has always been trapped in her own anticipatory nostalgia, and the public has always wanted to keep her there.

Chris Earnshaw began taking photographs of Washington, D.C. more than 40 years ago. By the time he paid a visit to a museum to tout his work, he had in his possession—in plastic bags and filing drawers—3,000 Polaroids of a city long gone.

The history of professional flatulence.

The making of the drone.

On the unexpected longevity of a very strange theory.

The origin story of Gabriel García Márquez’s classic.

If you wanted a divorce in the late 1800s, you had to move to South Dakota. Even if you were the niece of John Jacob Astor III.

Meet John Zerzan, arguably the most influential anarchist in America.

In a remote corner of Romania, neighbors kill each other over tiny strips of land.

How English became the weirdest major language in modern use.

On the history of political polls, which have become more influential and less reliable over time.

In 1966, Anton LaVey introduced the world to the Church of Satan. The 1980s saw a “Satanic Panic” in the form of abuse charges brought against child-care workers and suburban parents. Today, the author joins a group of Satanists for afternoon tea at the church’s global headquarters in a “bland New York college town.”

The construction of a modern American myth.