The Electric Company: Inside the Best 1971 PBS Show
The Electric Company (1971-1977) launched Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader, gave Rita Moreno her EGOT G, and taught millions of US kids to read through PBS sketch comedy.
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On This Day: May 27, 1995 — Christopher Reeve’s Fall in Culpeper
At 3:01 p.m. on May 27, 1995, Christopher Reeve was thrown from his horse at a low-stakes event in Culpeper, Virginia. What happened next reshaped spinal cord research for a decade.
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How the Spice Girls Took Over the World
From Wannabe to global domination: the story of how five British women sparked a pop culture revolution, defined Girl Power for a generation, and became the biggest act of the 90s.
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Purple Rain: How Prince Bent the 80s Into a Single Color
For one impossible summer in 1984, Prince owned the No. 1 movie, album, and single in America at the same time. Forty years later, Purple Rain still hasn’t loosened its grip on pop culture.
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On This Day: May 26, 1990 — The Week Women Owned the Entire Billboard Top 5
On the morning of May 26, 1990, radio DJs across America were spinning a chart that had never existed before. Five songs sat at numbers one through five on the Billboard Hot 100. Five songs. All by women. It sounds like a footnote, but in the pop landscape of 1990 — an industry still largely…
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MC Hammer: The Rise, the Pants, the Bankruptcy, and the Legacy
On February 12, 1990 — the same day Nelson Mandela walked free from Victor Verster Prison — a 27-year-old kid from Oakland named Stanley Kirk Burrell released his third studio album and accidentally changed pop culture forever. By August, it was selling 100,000 copies a day. By the following spring, it had gone diamond with…
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On This Day: May 25, 1983 — Return of the Jedi Premieres
On May 25, 1983, Return of the Jedi opened in 1,002 theaters and broke every box-office record on the books. Inside the secret production, the Ewok backlash, and how George Lucas closed the original Star Wars trilogy.
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Inside Grunge: A Walking Tour of the 90s’ Loudest, Loosest, Most Honest Decade
From Sub Pop basements to MTV Unplugged stages, grunge was the 90s’ loudest exhale. A walking tour of the music, fashion, and culture that defined a generation.
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Hudson Hawk: 7 Wild Facts From May 24, 1991’s Bomb
Hudson Hawk hit theaters on May 24, 1991 and became Bruce Willis’s most notorious flop. 7 wild facts about the $65M cult classic that almost broke a career.
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On This Day: May 23, 1980 — The Shining Premieres
On May 23, 1980, Warner Bros. dropped The Shining into U.S. theaters and quietly rewired horror cinema for the next four decades. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining 1980 release wasn’t an obvious blockbuster on opening weekend — critics shrugged, Stephen King fumed, and the Razzies even nominated it for Worst Director. Forty-five years later, it’s preserved…
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The Flannel Manifesto: A Field Guide to Grunge for People Who Missed the 90s
A no-BS field guide to grunge — the bands, the secondhand flannel, and the Gen X mood that rewired the 90s in about three years flat.
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Van Gogh’s $82.5M Painting: 7 Wild Facts From May 15, 1990
The Van Gogh Portrait of Dr. Gachet auction on May 15, 1990 detonated the art market in under three minutes. Christie’s New York chairman Christopher Burge opened the bidding at $20 million and slammed his gavel down at a final hammer price of $75 million — $82.5 million with the buyer’s premium — making it…
