Women including Ida B. Wells and Nellie Bly were on the front edge of investigative journalism in the 1800s. But even with these historical trailblazers, why were women excluded from reporting hard news until recent history?

The first amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that everyone has the right to practice his or her own religion or no religion at all. A similar guarantee exists in Canada under its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, this right to religious freedom hasn’t necessarily been assured for practitioners of traditional African religions throughout history in North America.

One morning in 1991, Senator Jesse Helms’ house was covered with a giant fake condom in an act of protest. Helms had been a vocal opponent of funding AIDS research and he had introduced an infamous and popular bill amendment that prevented federal money from being spent on AIDS research. There were few treatments available at the time, and with no help from the government, HIV was actively spreading across the country. In 1991 alone, nearly 30,000 American died of AIDS, and the numbers would keep rising until the late nineties.