The founding fathers deserve at least some of the blame for the worst presidencies in American history—they created an office that’s vaguely defined and ripe for abuse. Plus: how to fix it.

In 1920, Harvard University officials suspected that some students were gay. So they kicked them all out.

In the chaotic days before the Berlin Wall fell, the East German secret police shredded 45 million pages. Fifteen years later, a team of computer scientists figured out how to put it all back together.

The inner workings of a surprisingly amiable Holocaust denial conference.

The truck driver who reverse engineered the atomic bomb.

An uneasy friendship forms in colonial Ceylon between the future husband of Virgina Woolf and a socially repulsive police magistrate.

Prohibition couldn’t have happened without Wayne B. Wheeler, who foisted temperance on a thirsty nation 90 years ago.

The city of Boston, the Tea Party movement, and the rightful heir to the American Revolution.