modern history

Though Anastasia is more widely remembered, here's why Maria Romanov remains the most captivating daughter of Tsar Nicholas II.

John Wayne's legacy as the white, conservative Western hero of the 1950s included stances inherent to those attributes: racial superiority, homophobia, and revulsion at the changing landscape.

The Soviet Union even went so far as to include the Katyn Massacre among the list of Nazi war crimes presented at the Nuremberg trials.

When a reactor overheated and human error compounded the damage, disaster had only just begun. Chernobyl's contamination can still be felt to this day.

The Hays Code, inspired by Catholic dogma, attempted to — and succeeded in — censoring Hollywood films for nearly three decades.

The bright snapshot of her suburban life belied a dark negative — Kristen Gilbert was a serial killer who preyed on the weakest victims: those she nursed.

Radiation is not deterring wildlife from entering Chernobyl's exclusion zone. But what does it mean for the animal's well-being?

Though he was the appointed lawman at the time of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, Virgil Earp remained obscure compared to his younger brother Wyatt.

In the jungles of Vietnam where order and discipline hung by a thread, some officers faced a danger greater than the Viet Cong: their own men.

For centuries, humans have wondered if they are alone in the universe. In the early 20th century, the US government set out to figure it out once and for all.

Reinhard Heydrich had many nicknames: "the Blond Beast," "the Hangman," and "the Butcher of Prague" — but none of them quite captured just how ruthless he was.