It shut down a major U.S. city, inspired a rock opera, led to decades of labor unrest and provoked fears Russian Bolsheviks were trying to overthrow American capitalism. It was the Seattle General Strike of 1919, which began on Feb. 6 and lasted just...

Few sights are as instantly recognizable, and few sites speak more fully to American nationalism. Standing on the South Rim in 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed it “one of the great sights every American should see.”

It’s true. Every visitor...

The life choices that had led me to be sitting in a booth underneath a banner that read “Ask a Philosopher” – at the entrance to the New York City subway at 57th and 8th – were perhaps random but inevitable.

I’d been a “public philosopher” for 15...

Of all the skills that a person could have in today’s globalized world, few serve individuals – and the larger society – as well as knowing how to speak another language.

People who speak another language score higher on tests...

A deadly car bomb at a Bogotá police academy claimed by Colombia’s National Liberation Army, or ELN, is the latest sign that Colombia’s civil war is not over. President Ivan Duque called the January attack, which killed 21 military personnel and wounded 68, a “crazy terrorist act.”

The leftist ELN became...

Russia’s successful interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election may inspire other countries to do the same.

These other countries don’t look threatening. They look like democracies. But they’re not.

They’re...

The fax machine is a symbol of obsolete technology long superseded by computer networks – but faxing is actually growing in popularity.

Four years ago, I wrote a history of 160 years of faxing, saying my book covered “the rise and fall of the fax machine.” The end I...

The periodic table merges scientific inquiry, international politics, hero worship, desires for structure and desires for credit.

Formally, the modern periodic table is a systematic arrangement of the known chemical elements. The table is organized in an orderly way that shows the...

Editor’s note: In his second State of the Union address, President Donald Trump ranged from generous to combative, eloquent to blunt. He unexpectedly complimented the wave of recently elected Democratic women in the House, and they responded by applauding for themselves. And he spent a lot of time on a his favorite topic: immigration and the...

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is facing a controversy after a photograph surfaced from his medical school yearbook showing one person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. The media alleged the governor was the one in...