In May 2015, Julie Beck wrote about how scientists have honored and analyzed J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic.
The year you were born, Joseph S. Clark, Jr. wrote about the scarcity of good men in politics.
In April 1986, Robert D. Kaplan wrote about the internal and external strife that threatened Sudan's government during the country's second civil war.
Everett Collection
Wild in the Streets was released in 1968.
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 June 2011, Conor Friedersdorf wrote about the outsize DEA budget in contrast to the agency's inability to stop illicit drug use and trade.
In December 2006, James Fallows wrote about Microsoft's efforts to improve the influential operating system.
Dion Ogust
In August 2012, Jen Doll wrote about the impact of the Baby-Sitters Club novel series.
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.
In December 2014, Adrienne LaFrance wrote about how the way we see privacy will change over the next decade.
The Atlantic is here to help you process it, in stories like these: