Retropod

Dr. Spock - not the guy from Star Trek - was at one time America's most beloved pediatrician. A whole generation of children was raised on his medical advice. But not even his popularity could save him from being indicted by the federal government.

During World War I, the Marines Corps needed help on the home front while men were fighting overseas. Opha May Johnson was the first woman in line.

In 1812, Philadelphia was outfitted with the latest in plumbing technology - a network of wooden pipes to carry water throughout the city.

Back in the 1830s, Jim Crow wasn't yet a symbol of inequality. He was a fictional character in minstrel shows who, to entertain his audiences, performed in blackface.

A full year after the King James Bible was printed in 1631, people discovered an error.

The president's State of the Union started as a simple report on the condition on the nation; overtime, the address became a moment to rally Congress and the public.

The woman who first introduced equal pay legislation in Congress had to fight to be taken seriously — and often failed.

In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union’s Air Defense Forces, trusted his gut and averted a global nuclear catastrophe.

A few days before his team took the field as huge underdogs in Super Bowl III, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath made what was seen as an insane prediction at the time: "The Jets will win Sunday," he said. "I guarantee it."

If you work in an office without offices, with just about everyone working in a large spare space full of stylish desks, straight lines and papers stored in a credenza, then you have met Florence Knoll Bassett.

After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, John Surratt traveled across three continents, wore disguises and used fake names for nearly two years to escape authorities.

If you’re like most Americans, you probably visit a grocery store once or twice a week. But you probably don’t know that one single grocery item is responsible for the rise of supermarkets as we know them.

Over the past seven decades, the Doomsday Clock has served as a metaphorical measure of humankind’s proximity to global catastrophe. Every year, scientists and nuclear experts set the clock's time after grappling over the state of geopolitical affairs.

Pinball was once so vilified that it was banned in cities across the United States.

In the 1950s, Lester Wunderman became the king of direct mail advertising — the ancestor of today’s online targeted ads.

In the early days of the House, some congresspeople thought hats had no place atop the heads of representatives debating the great issues of the day. Hats, they argued, weren’t dignified.

When Eugene Cernan walked on the moon, he didn’t know he’d be the last astronaut to make the journey.

The name on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth certificate was not Martin. Nor did the document include the middle name Luther.

When Alexander Hamilton argued in favor of lifetime tenures for Supreme Court justices, he probably didn’t foresee them living past their prime.

More than a century ago, Carry Amelia Nation — hatchet in hand — chopped the country toward temperance.

Once upon a time, people walked between the U.S. and Canada over a frozen Niagara Falls. But one day, that all changed forever.

Adolf Hitler's mother may be the only person he genuinely cared for.

For decades, the boundary between Mexico and the United States was little more than an imaginary line in the sand.

When a steel industry strike threatened military production during the Korean War, and Congress couldn’t come to an agreement, President Truman had a solution — declare a national emergency.

Lego started as a company that made wooden toys, and grew into an empire of plastic building blocks.