Slow Burn

When you think of an alien abduction, what do you picture? Humanoid creatures, medical experiments, lost memories retrieved through hypnosis? That narrative was largely unknown until Betty and Barney ...

In the early 1930s, Mae West’s dirty talk and hip swiveling walk made her one of the biggest movie stars in America. But before West hit the big-screen, she was prosecuted for staging not one, but two...

McGruff the Crime Dog arrived on the scene at the dawn of the 1980s, just as a firehose of anti-drug PSAs was inundating the youth of America. These messages didn’t always work as intended—but they di...

McGruff the Crime Dog arrived on the scene at the dawn of the 1980s, just as a firehose of anti-drug PSAs was inundating the youth of America. These messages didn’t always work as intended—but they di...

At the beginning of World War II, the greatest threat to the American war effort wasn’t the Nazis or the Japanese—it was runaway inflation. The man in charge of stopping it was the country’s “price cz...

There were 1.8 million weddings in 1942, the most that had ever been recorded in a single year in American history. But how many of them would last? 98-year-old Millie Summergrad tells the story of on...

On Aug. 1, 1942, the nation’s recording studios went silent. Musicians were fed up with the new technologies threatening their livelihoods, so they refused to record until they got their fair share. T...

In March 1942, a new nightly radio show hit the American airwaves. The stated goal of Station Debunk was to correct all the lies getting tossed around about America’s involvement in the war. But the r...

In the history of viral images, #TheDress has got to be in the top 10. This unassuming photo of a party dress kicked off a global debate when people realized they were seeing it completely differently...

Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan launched another attack on the United States. This time, Axis forces actually invaded, turning the Aleutian Islands into a battleground. What the country did next,...