On Wednesday morning, Bloomberg reported some positive Starbucks news: The corporation had voluntarily disclosed a set of statistics on gender and racial pay equity. The numbers, I was pleasantly ...

In 1985, a single movie almost killed Disney animation. With an announced budget of $25 million—later accounts place it closer to $40 million— The Black Cauldron was at the time the most expensive ...

The salsa bar at Taco Time in The Dalles, Oregon. Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world's hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook, Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter @atlasobscura. In early ...

The classic American emergency exit sign—the bold red letters spelling out E-X-I-T—seems at first glance like an unimpeachable bit of sign design. The contrast between the letters and the background ...

In late 2014, the South Dakota Historical Society Press published Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pre-Little House memoir, intended for adults, Pioneer Girl. Surprising even the press, the lavishly detailed ...

Wikimedia Commons/White House Historical Association It’s a familiar chapter in our history, part of the triumphant narrative of westward expansion: In 1803, the United States bought a massive chunk ...

In the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, where guys dressed like the Marlboro Man loaf at gas stations and kids hang out at two-step dance halls, a sarcastic 55-year-old biologist from Zimbabwe is ...

It’s so nice to be needed even after you’re dead. That’s what I was thinking during the rehearsal dinner for Pocahontas and John Rolfe at the Williamsburg Lodge, off Route 60 in Virginia. Actors play ...

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA—Until the summer of 2014, 16-year-old Florence Mbabazi had spent all of her short life in northern Rwanda’s Gihembe Refugee Camp, a humming sprawl of more than 3,000 mud houses with ...

The British Library has recently digitized part of a multi-authored play, "The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore," written between about 1596 and 1604. Three pages of this draft of the play are apparently ...

Courtesy of V&A Museum. If you live in Europe or the Americas, you likely pick up a fork every day and give no thought to it, unless you’re selecting flatware for a wedding registry or you happen to ...

In 1996, the New Yorker published “Hating Hillary,” Henry Louis Gates’ reported piece on the widespread animosity for the then–first lady. “Like horse-racing, Hillary-hating has become one of those ...