MONTPELIER, Vermont — The Green Mountain State is turning a shade of purple. It may seem a shocking political development for one of America’s most liberal states, a seeming blue bastion, or something further left, that has elected socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) since 2006, and as a House member for 16 years prior. However, […]

For Brian Wilson’s lengthy contributions to the tarnished monolith of 20th-century rock culture, neither he nor his work has ever sat easily within it. Wilson, the Beach Boys songwriter who died on June 11 at 82, did love rock ‘n’ roll, per se: He shamelessly ripped off Chuck Berry for the band’s iconic early single […]

TALLINN, Estonia — In the summer of 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared that the United States would observe “Baltic Freedom Day.” The proclamation turned a grim anniversary — the Soviet Union’s mass deportation of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian nationals away from their historic homelands began on June 14, 1941 — into an occasion to affirm “our hope […]

The District of Columbia was carved out of land given to the federal government by Virginia and Maryland. It was supposed to be a 100-square-mile diamond. Cartographers and Metro riders will notice those are not the dimensions of America’s capital city today. The portion of the district that originally belonged to Virginia was retroceded to […]