Grand juries play a central role in the American justice system. They are tasked with listening to evidence presented by prosecutors and witnesses and then deciding, by a secret vote, whether there’s enough evidence to charge a person with a felony, which is any criminal offense punishable by at least one year in prison. Grand […]
If Google searches are a window into what Americans are really thinking about, then millions of us were focused on a daily online word game developed by a New York-based software engineer. The impact of the term, Wordle, the most-searched term in 2022, is what surprised Simon Rogers, trends data team lead at Google, the most […]
Some American myths go all the way back to the nation’s founding. Like the one where, as a young boy, America’s first president, George Washington, felt compelled to tell the truth about taking a hatchet to his father’s cherry tree because he could not tell a lie. “There are plenty of lies that are kind […]
When America’s leaders can’t think of the perfect word for certain situations, they sometimes make one up. And those new words often go down in history. From “lunatic fringe” (Teddy Roosevelt) and “iffy” (Franklin D. Roosevelt) to “snowmageddon” (Barack Obama) and “bigly” (Donald Trump), the terms coined by U.S. presidents are as unique as the […]