Documents That Changed the World

The worst thing that ever happened to Henrietta Lacks - the cancer that killed her - is what has immortalized her, in a line of cellular tissue used in research, making her the savior of countless lives - even at the cost of her dignity

Einstein famously didn't say "God doesn't play dice with the universe". But what about cards? That periodic table you stared at in high school has a surprising origin story; once you hear it, you can't unsee it

Let me just jot down this little note - a few words tossed off in the margin of a book, and 3 1/2 centuries of mathematicians banging their heads against walls, ensure, dogged determination to achieve an indisputable outcome, whatever the reason

Road trip! Let's just pack up and go - but where should we go, stay, eat? Easy decisions for some, perilous for others, until a mailman lent his name to a little book that made the journey a whole lot safer, less humiliating and more enjoyable to generations of travelers setting out on the open road to a better future

A compendium of fastests and highests and mosts in a book that nobody needs but millions have enjoyed - documenting the boundaries of human capability; just don't call it trivial, and please, stop eating the bicycles. Golden plover for the win! (or not) (researched by Brooks Scheibler)

Edison invented the movie camera, right? Nope - and therein lies a Hollywood story that doesn't take place anywhere near Hollywood, with guest appearances by Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, Jack the Ripper, and Louis Le Prince, the real inventor, and his real life mystery (researched/written by Ellianna Thayne)

Just enter the portal and fame and fortune await, right? Maybe, though nothing is guaranteed - one of many misconceptions about a tool that does its job and makes things work, no wormholes required

Who's got your number? Hopefully nobody who isn't supposed to - the origins of the number we (almost) all live by, why and how it's become so necessary, and what happens when you die - or somebody thinks you have

How can you know what you can't read? A writing system without a key, suspended knots and strings we can't interpret, leaving entire peoples also in suspense to understand their past and stories (researched/written by Diego Licea)

"How dare you treat me like this?" The cry of untold millions of consumers with a grievance to air, or type, or phone in - or bake into clay tablets, in the faint but eternal hope of being heard (researched/written by Ellianna Thayne)

How is a galaxy a document? How could it change the world? Well, look out there, as far as we can see, and even farther - and then look inside, and maybe you'll find out.

I love you, a bushel and a peck - or maybe an acre, or fathom, or hundredweight, or any of the thousands of measurements we have created, which somebody has to establish and standardize, like the meter, one way or the other

The road map and guide book to the afterlife, all spelled out to ensure a successful and surprisingly personalized journey

According to Emily Post...etiquette is meant to make people feel comfortable and at ease, and the more who know the better - and it's not about the forks

Human rights and how they came to be recognized, agreed upon and most importantly recorded and declared, for all of us to share

Papers, signatures, seals, ceremonies, rules that produce documents to let hundreds speak for millions in having their say in the most important decision they make

The best known example of an attempt to help the future to understand the present when it's the past, even 5000 years on

The extraordinary ordinariness of articles of impeachment, then and now, and the lessons to be learned, over and over again

Whoever thought finding the law could be a challenge? Not if it's on a 7 ft tall stela for all to see - now, as then, finding the law can be almost as complicated as finding justice

What's the most popular television show in the world that you may never have heard of? Founding documents, politics, dancing apes, and the shared cultural moments that are the Eurovision Song Contest

Line after line, year after year, the forms that keep information organized, processes processing, and civilization working

When is a fake not a fake? A strange WWII stories, authentically fake documents on a dead fake British officer to divert German attention from an invasion of Sicily and change the course of the war-for real (researched/co-written by Kate Merifield)

Mixtape, love letter, time capsule, letter of introduction, message in a bottle and more, not to mention the furthest object of human construction, sending our messages out to the stars, seeking understanding and remembrance

Words define a language, and in turn languages help to define cultures and societies. And people define words, as the last man who tried to define them all himself knew, in the process trying also to define and distinguish his developing nation

800 years ago, an Italian mathematician and world traveler brought the gift of digits to Europe, from India, through Arabia, and taught the West how to count, and calculate, and figure it all out

Vote for the person you want, somebody in charge counts ‘em up and then we find out the winner. As if. The many ways that can go wrong, and the importance of good design done well but somebody who knows how

When the market started to crash, the ticker, reliable source of up-to-the-second information, fell behind, and all of a sudden not knowing what you didn't know was worse than knowing, and the spiral went down and down from there

Two Thanksgivings! Twice the turkey, twice the parades, twice the football? Nope, but for a few years the nation was split by a presidential proclamation that didn't quite work as intended

How do you read words that aren't there? The towering idea of the Declaration of Independence, the passage on slavery deleted before its adoption, and the hole that silence has left behind

Encyclopedias have changed, due to the one you know - but actually the one you probably don't, and the ways in which we know the things we know are changing right along with them

The Richter Scale...isn't used any more, and the man who created it had a mind more sensitive to the movements of the earth than the subtleties of society

Hungry yet? The cookbook, and the woman, who standardized recipes and encouraged us all to think about food as science and art

Name after name, row after row, the wall, and the things we bring to it, including ourselves, all of which help us remember and reconcile

How to know when to believe a research study, drawing the line between real and spurious, and how a "random" line in a book defines the way we understand the world

Bishop James Ussher, the search for the beginning of the universe, and the date (and time) of Creation, making the most of the tools at hand

One of the greatest legacies, and worst-written wills of all times, though almost completely not what the author had in mind; wills, their history and how to (almost always) get the last word

O say do you know...the story behind the Star-Spangled Banner? It took off fast, then slowly, and has stood the test of time while still, and always, becoming

The first scholarly journal, at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, and helping to give birth to the way we write and think about scholarship and investigation...and now it's all changing again

It's just "a piece of paper," except it's not. The story of Catherine Elizabeth Benson Brewer, the first woman to receive a diploma, and how we recognize achievement, yesterday and today (written/researched/recorded by Kelsey Gibbons)

I have in my hand a list...of 57 Communists in the State Department. Or was it 205? Or 81? Or was there a list at all? How documents get their power, from us, even if they don't exist

One of the oldest works of literature we know, a hymn written by Enheduanna, perhaps the first known named author, in the Sumerian city of Ur, a plea for help that doesn't feel out of place 4300 years later

Why the Popes ruled Italy: one of the greatest gifts in history, as a result of one of the greatest forgery in history, the art of making a document lie, and figuring out what's real and what's not

The secret decoding of a secret message: how Britain found out that Germany wanted Mexico to attack America to keep them out of World War I, and the spectacular backfire that resulted (researched/produced by Jill Fenno)

The black box that reveals, not conceals: how flight recorders were developed, how they work, how they're used, what happens to the information, and how they're related to the 8-track tape

That poster--isn't what you think. She's not Rosie the Riveter, and the lives she's led, as, feminist icon, symbol of wartime solidarity, cultural nostalgia touchstone, are almost all entirely wrong

Seward's Folly, enabled by a single piece of paper exchanged for $7.2 million, adding vast new territories to the US, and telling us about how money moves, and how people feel about how that's changing (researched/produced/co-written by Andrew Kyrios)

486 frames, likely the most scrutinized film of all time, dissected, debated, debunked, and the harbinger of things to come as events are increasingly documented and shared

Undoubtedly one of the great document stories of all time, which help us to think about permanence, durability, and what can happen when media outlast messages

Are you crazy? Maybe yes, maybe no, but either way, this book lays out what mental disorders are, and aren't, and reinforce the power that we give names of all kinds

Joseph Smith: led to long-buried golden tablets revealing lost truths...or the most successful humbug even known? Words, faith, a backstory that defies logic, and the power of belief