In February 2015, Julie Beck wrote about what is lost when websites change or disappear.
The year you were born, Claude M. Steele wrote about how undervaluing black college students prevents them from completing their degrees.
In September 1965, Elizabeth Drew wrote about the cigarette lobby's successful efforts to stop states from regulating cigarette advertising.
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The conflicts and displacements touched off around the world by the attacks have been reverberating for the majority of your life. “This ‘war’ [on terrorism] will never be over,” wrote James Fallows, a few years after the towers fell.
In May 2012, Stephen Marche wrote about how Facebook and other social-media platforms were making people lonely, even as they connected them to others more than ever before.
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Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was released in 2005.
In March 2011, The Daily Dish asked if American exceptionalism is real or myth.
Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
In June 2010, Cailey Hall wrote about the multi-film Twilight saga.
Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
When 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, he ignited a tinderbox of protests that continue to roil the Middle East, and kindled the beginnings of democracy in Tunisia.
But it's possible to prevent that. In May 2016, Ed Yong wrote about the recommended steps to avert a post-antibiotic apocalypse.
The Atlantic is here to help you process it, in stories like these: