Historic Painting: "The Funeral of Shelley" by Louis Édouard Fournier, 1889.
This painting captures the essence of a defining moment in 19th century Romantic literary history.
The Outer Garden
Speak no evil: the Satanic Verses affair, 34 years on.
The controversy over one of the world's most infamous books still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
It started with a bad glass of wine: the St. Scholastica Day riots.
The amazing story of how a single glass of wine led to a violent riot and a watershed moment in English history.
Iran-Contra: the real life "wall of crazy." (Video)
My new video analyzes and deconstructs the poorly-understood foreign policy scandal of the 1980s.
June 18, 1178: The day the Moon blew up.
How five English monks witnessed an extraordinary astronomical event.
Mr. Spock to the bridge: the real-life search for planet Vulcan.
In 1860, a French astronomer was convinced he'd discovered a planet he called Vulcan. Wait, what?
Saga of the Week: The epic TV miniseries of the 1970s.
In the late 1970s, the world came to a screeching halt when the latest epic miniseries came on network TV.