In March 1948, Raymond Chandler disparaged the Oscars for rewarding mass apeal over artistry.
The year you were born, Edgar Lawrence Smith wrote about how debit balances doomed the American economic system, just months after the Great Depression began.
In August 2015, David Frum wrote about the hatred of Stephen Harper, a Conservative and Canada's prime minister at the time.
In September 1953, General Marshall wrote about the mistakes of pulling back from the Korean peninsula.
AP
In August 2012, Christopher Orr wrote about Eastwood's political leanings.
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 April 2013, Megan Garber wrote about the swift and spiteful final push to invent the cell phone.
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: