civil rights

Atom Splitting / Atomzertrümmerung: Austrian Manhattan Project Scientist Otto Robert Frisch in Los Alamos, 1943-1945

April 19, 2021

By Kristina Poznan The U.S. government’s World War II Manhattan Project benefitted from the work of several scientists born in Austria-Hungary, from physicists to chemists to mathematicians. Elizabeth Rona, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Eugene Wigner were all from Budapest, George Placzek from Brno, and Stanislaw Ulam from Lviv. Among those born…

Raptured and demonized: Josephine Baker in Vienna

March 9, 2021

By Mona Horncastle “In the end, there is only one race: the human race.” -Josephine Baker When Freda J. McDonald is born in a slum in Saint Louis in 1906, it is unthinkable she will become the first African American superstar to conquer the world as Josephine Baker. The illegitimate daughter of a laundress, her…