Little Richard swung between flamboyant performances and religious fervour - but he always came back to music. With news of his death at 87, musicians paid tribute to his huge rock ‘n’ roll legacy.
The Smithsonian Institute closed all of its museums due to the worldwide COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Shutterstock
The COVID-19 pandemic has closed museums and cultural sites worldwide. Meanwhile, curators are already working hard to preserve the current moment so that future generations may understand it.
The squares of medieval European cities bore witness to the reopening of economies after plagues.
(Shutterstock)
The cities of Europe have experienced disease outbreaks for centuries, but they were able to bounce back using quarantine, economic stimulus and patience. Not all were successful.
Emily Klancher Merchant, a historian of science and technology at the University of California at Davis, shares some of the most interesting stories behind the 2020 census questionnaire
During coronavirus lockdowns, gardens have served as an escape from feelings of alienation.
Richard Bord/Getty Images
The big questions don’t get much bigger. After the Lisbon earthquake killed thousands, philosopher Voltaire took aim at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and skewered his view that God is good.
There were eerie similarities between Pepys’ time and our own.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Sure, there were no Zoom calls or ventilators. But thanks to a prolific diarist, we can see some striking similarities, from daily death counts to quack remedies.
Bhaktapur Durbar Square in January 2020.
Vanicka Arora
Bhaktapur suffered 300 deaths, 2,000 wounded and over 30,000 houses damaged in the 2015 earthquake. Heritage restoration has become crucial to community recovery.
Antonio, from the Yanomami village of Watoriki, photographed in November 1992. After contact with Brazilian society in the 1970s, more than half the Yanomami population died from infectious diseases.
William Milliken
In the 1790s, penal reformers rebuilt America’s squalid jails as airy, hygienic places meant to keep residents – and by extension society – healthy. Now they’re hotbeds of COVID-19. What went wrong?
Adrian De Leon, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
How should Asian Americans respond to rising anti-Asian racist actions? History may offer some lessons during the pandemic.
Members of a medical assistance team from Jiangsu province at a ceremony marking their departure after participating in the fight against Covid-19 in Wuhan, March 19, 2020.
STR/AFP
Emmanuel Véron, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco) and Emmanuel Lincot, Institut catholique de Paris (ICP)
China is seeking to present itself as a model in the fight against the coronavirus – even if it means rewriting the history of the crisis and discrediting the governance of liberal democracies.