Bonding over the mineral-rich mud in the hole at their feet, an older female places her trunk into a juvenile’s mouth. Elephants dig relentlessly with their tusks and trunks in the muck at Dzanga Bai, mining the substrata for salt and other minerals to supplement their diet of leaves, bark, grasses, and fruit […] Read more

From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. Ellis Island is located in the upper bay just off the New Jersey coast, within the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Through the years, this gateway to the new […] Read more

Yesterday, millions of people were seduced by an offer of love online. Today, the cyber promise was a joke — with a new e-mail offering humor. But for those who responded, the joke was on them. The e-mails contained a destructive computer program — referred to as a worm, which is a type of virus. […] Read more

The Jewish immigrants who founded and came to dominate the American film industry, created an image of America out of their own idealism … a vision that proved so powerful that it came to shape the myths, values, traditions and archetypes of America herself. For these men, prevented from entering the real corridors of gentility […] Read more

The notion of England as a gentle, fabled land freeze-framed some time in the 1930s when community life revolved around the post office, the country pub and the local vicarage has been erased by the juggernaut of the late-20th century and vast suburban sprawl. The heralded ‘new’ Britain, led by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, […] Read more

By mid-1940, the German Army had conquered all of Western Europe … Hitler was tightening the noose around Britain … German U-Boats were decimating Allied convoys, threatening to cut off Britain’s only lifeline. But Churchill had a ‘secret weapon,’ the strangest military establishment in the world! Crossword fanatics, chess champions, mathematicians, students and professors, American […] Read more

They were the first large wave of immigrants to land in nineteenth-century America, arriving poor and desperate, uprooted strangers in a strange world. They fought to belong, to survive, and to get ahead, as would all newcomers to America. They endured the hardships and insults that beset all immigrants. They were mostly country folk and […] Read more

It was farewell to all the worries and cares of the day. When the Paramount Theatre opened its doors, we forgot about names like Hitler and Mussolini. It was time instead to unwind and dream a little. The Paramount introduced new young singers like Frank Sinatra, and showed films with big stars like Clark Gable […] Read more

More than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during the war. Fewer than a million ever saw serious combat. The infantry represented just 14 percent of the troops overseas. But wherever they fought – in North Africa or the South Pacific or Western Europe — the infantry bore the brunt of the fighting […] Read more