The grisly murder of Athol McCowan gripped a sleepy coastal region in Australia. But even more shocking was how the killer’s exhumed pet dog served as star witness in the trial.

The North Carolina Klan thought burning crosses would scare the Lumbee tribe out of Robeson County. That’s not how things went down.

When corruption threatened the administration of Chester A. Arthur, one ordinary woman put pen to paper. Julia Sand’s passionate letters caught his attention, and rewrote...

When a wealthy white woman turned up dead in 1944, Philadelphia wasted no time sending her black maid to the electric chair. But did anyone care about the truth?

A century ago, a cadre of women demanded to be freed from the tyranny of fashion. Their innovative ideas and radical demands—pockets!—took the country by storm.

After nearly dying while filming “The Wizard of Oz,” Margaret Hamilton spent the rest of her career trying to escape her evil character’s long shadow.

In 1749, Emilie du Châtelet feared bearing a child at 42 would be the last thing she did. In her final year, she worked furiously on a magnum opus that would change the world.

Williamina Fleming was just supposed to help the director of the Harvard Observatory with household tasks. Instead, she changed the course of astronomy.

Did Maryon Cooper Hewitt want to suppress “bad genes” or steal her child’s inheritance? Their battle over genetics and motherhood riveted the nation in 1936.