A childhood accident didn’t impair James Thurber’s comic vision
This minor genius of mirth lost his left eye at the age of 6.
Dr. Howard Markel
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The sexual assault case that shocked Hollywood almost a century ago
On Sept. 9, 1921, a young actress named Virginia Rappe died of a ruptured urinary bladder, days after a Labor…
How mental health struggles wrote Ernest Hemingway’s final chapter
On a Sunday morning, the famed writer awoke early in a discombobulated and distressed mood. The rest is literary history…
‘One day they simply weren’t there.’ How researchers reconstructed Anne Frank’s last months
Today would have been the 91st birthday of Anne Frank, the girl who left behind a tattered, hidden diary, now…
‘The Plague’ perfectly captures the risk in returning to normal
It's the most vexing phase of an epidemic -- once an illness peters out, healthy people begin to place it…
What caused Beethoven’s deafness?
It is a query that has invited many diagnoses over the last 200 years.
How Groucho Marx fell prey to elder abuse
The turmoil of Groucho's last few years are all too familiar to adult children everywhere who are concerned with the…
The day Judy Garland’s star burned out
A singer of remarkable power and range, Garland was one of the brightest stars. But she also suffered a lifetime…
How ‘Raisin in the Sun’ author Lorraine Hansberry defined what it meant to be ‘young, gifted and black’
Before her early death of pancreatic cancer, the groundbreaking writer made history with "A Raisin in the Sun."
Why Shakespeare’s own finale remains a closed book
In "Hamlet," William Shakespeare contemplated the fact that once a person dies, no living person knows where that departed soul…
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