In June 2012, Brian Resnick wrote about University of Maryland's Colin Gore and the test flight of his human-powered helicopter.
In December 2012, Peter Osnos wrote about Polish Jews who were able outsmart the Nazis.
The year you were born, Arnold Whitridge wrote about the college undergraduates that petitioned the President not to intervene in Europe during World War II.
In June 2012, Megan Garber wrote about how humans imagined aliens at the beginning of the Space Age.
AP
In the July/August 2014 issue of the magazine, Joshua Wolf Shenk wrote about the brilliance of the creative collaboration between Lennon and Paul McCartney.
NASA
Over the years, the moon landing has come to be lauded as the pinnacle of human achievement, although it was often derided at the time. In 1963, NASA astronauts took to The Atlantic to plead the case for landing on the moon.
In October 2010, Cristine Russell wrote about the practice of in vitro fertilization (IVF) becoming more common.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute
With NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission in 2005, humans landed a probe in the outer reaches of the solar system for the first time, a moment Ross Andersen called the most glorious mission in the history of planetary science.
The Atlantic is here to help you process it, in stories like these: