Torture has written some of the bloodiest lines of history. The heretic’s fork, the Judas cradle and other medieval devices might be museum curios now, but Amnesty has evidence of torture in 141 countries during the last five years. It...

Cupid is especially busy on Valentine’s Day, but his methods leave much to chance. The mischievous love god blindfolds himself before firing his arrow through a new lover’s heart. An indiscriminate approach, but those arrows are pretty...

Who saw that coming? Last month, Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro appeared on TV, in carefully orchestrated, simultaneous broadcasts, to announce a prisoner swap. This was the start of a new era of rapprochement after more than...