Google Doodles for First American Woman in Space

In today’s doodle, Google celebrates what would have been the 64th birthday of Sally Ride—the first American woman in space. Animator Olivia Huynh created five playful GIFs for the doodle, each capturing a different aspect of Ride’s inspiring story. In an accompanying guest blog post, Tam O’Shaughnessy—Sally Ride’s partner and co-founder and CEO of Sally Ride Science—writes, “As the first American woman in space, Sally …

An Interactive Chart of American Names

The latest interactive data visualization by researcher Randal Olson offers some intriguing facts about popular American names. After selecting a gender and entering a search item, Olson’s experiment combs through Social Security records to estimate and plot a name’s popularity over the past 115 years. But unlike other name graphs, Olson’s tool also delineates the number of people bearing the name who are both living …

HBO’s ‘Bessie’ is a Biopic Worth Watching

There have been many award-winning films covering black public figures over the past decade—”Selma,” “Get On Up,” “12 Years a Slave,” “The Butler”—and they’ve all been about men. HBO’s latest release “Bessie”—which follows the life of blues legend Bessie Smith—finally adds a leading lady to the list. Slate calls the movie “probably the boldest and most revealing biopic [about a black woman], offering a side …