How Big Hair Defined the Decade You Went to High School

By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker

Adolescence represents one of the most significant periods of self-identity. Famed developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson said the teenage years are specifically punctuated by that quest, which he described featuring “identity vs. role confusion.” No longer children but not quite adults, adolescents work through their personal goals, belief systems, and values while battling against their lack of autonomy. Without the ability to express themselves with careers, acquisitions, or other outlets, a vast majority of teenagers use exaggerated outward appearances that often subscribe to a particular stereotype to fit into a specific role.

High school students over the last century have divided themselves by visibly striking groups: the hippies, jocks, preppies, punks, emo kids, hipsters, and so forth. From fashion and musical tastes to hairstyles, teenagers wear their identities quite literally on their sleeves and heads. These trends reflect the cultural backdrops from which they grew: pixie cuts and fedoras during the Roaring Twenties; long hair and Afros during the ‘60s, and the big-hair trends of the ‘80s all typify the world in which these people lived; whether constrained and conservative (the ‘50s) or wild and subversive (the ‘70s).

In this way, it’s possible to chart American history by fashion trends and hairdos. Never ones to disappoint, the folks at The Pudding seized on this concept to use AI deep learning classification to analyze a dataset of more than 30,000 high school yearbook photos spanning 1930 to 2013 in a study called The Big Data of Big Hair, published in 2019. The study identified the median hair density for high school students in every year; median hair density is a measure of how far out a hairstyle extends from the bearer’s head. Here, Stacker has included the densities for the beginning, middle, and end of each decade in the study, separated into hairstyles associated with boys and those associated with girls.

The data is decidedly Anglocentric, which is representative of census data which shows the U.S. white population comprised more than 80% of the total population until 2000. As demographics in the U.S. have changed in the last few decades, we have seen more representative, mainstream hairstyles (and associated products) change, as well. It may take longer for schools to catch up to these changes: A New Jersey wrestler in 2019 was forced to cut his dreadlocks before a match; while hairstyles like braid extensions have been called out for violating dress codes.

Keep reading to see how big (and cropped) hairstyles accentuated the times from which they grew.

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Black Artists Music Wouldn't be the Same Without

By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker

There is no American music that doesn’t have Black roots. From country-western, which draws upon banjo music from Africa, to rock ‘n’ roll, begun by a Black woman playing electric guitar in 1938, American music can’t be separated out from its rich history of diversity and experimentation.

Every artist transforms his or her medium simply by working in it, and it so follows that every musician changes the art form slightly just by creating and performing songs. But throughout American history, there are examples of artists who have been so transformative as to change musical genres themselves. Other times, artists unwittingly create new genres—whether Fela Kuti with Afrobeat, Frankie Knuckles with house music, or Fats Domino with ska.

To take a closer look at how Black musicians shaped American music, Stacker pored through historical documents, recordings, Billboard charts, and studied similarities in various musical acts over time to determine 41 artists music wouldn’t be the same without. Paring the list down to just 41 was a challenge (the gallery could easily include hundreds)—so there are certainly icons missing, including powerhouses like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Wilson Pickett, Mary Wells, Roberta Flack, Tina Turner, and Gloria Gaynor—each of whom has made significant contributions to music in his or her own right. To help narrow the field, we focused on artists whom scholars can definitively conclude altered the musical landscape in some dramatic fashion. Artists highlighted in this gallery changed the course of music by doing something entirely new with it rather than simply building upon the legends who came before.

Beyond their musicianship, many of the Black artists throughout history also stand as shining examples of bravery and leadership in the face of adversity. From Marian Anderson, who inspired Eleanor Roosevelt to drop out of the Daughters of the American Revolution when the group wouldn’t allow Anderson to sing in front of an integrated audience (Anderson ended up singing in front of 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial and was the first Black person to perform with the Metropolitan Opera in New York), to Ray Charles, who refused to perform for an all-white audience in Georgia, there is example after example of musical icons who shone a light that encouraged others to forge ahead and make incremental changes that helped form a more perfect union.

Keep reading to learn about 41 Black artists music wouldn’t be the same without—and be sure to check out our curated Spotify playlist of essential listening from each.

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25 American Folk Heroes and the Stories Behind Them

By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker

Folk tales serve as a cultural binder of sorts, bringing people together with a fomented sense of shared identity. They’re also used as explainers, similarly to how mythology worked for ancient Greeks. American folk heroes are richly textured and many-layered: Contemporary characters like Paul Bunyan explained the creation of America’s rivers and lakes and served as inspiration for workers exposed to grueling conditions while carving a way West and extracting resources for trade or infrastructure. Other tales, like those of Sacagawea and Pocahontas, served as scapegoats for a version of American history that sidesteps the Native American genocide enacted by early colonists, Western explorers, and even the U.S. government.

For enslaved African Americans, folklore provided subjugated people with heroic tales of bravery, defiance, and escape from Br’er Rabbit to Stack-O-Lee. Native Americans had hundreds of stories rooted in folklore from the Sleeping Ute Mountain to Kokopelli. Many folk heroes such as Hugh Glass and Annie Oakley are based on actual people, while others are pure fiction such as the Maid of the Mist and Bud Billiken. These tall tales come in the form of nursery rhymes, children’s tales, mascots, and cautionary myths and speak to us of strength, perseverance, and the celebrated intrepidness of rugged American individualism.

As is the case with any hero, much of American folklore features flawed characters. Some would certainly be villains today, whether Billy the Kid for his unchecked aggression against officers of the law or Hannah Duston for her violent slaughter of Native Americans.

Stacker scoured American history and mythology from books, news accounts, history lessons, and journal articles to curate a diverse gallery of 25 American folk heroes and the stories behind them. Some are well-known characters like Johnny Appleseed and Molly Pitcher, and others are much more obscure.

See how many you already know, and read on to learn about all the rest.

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Quiz: Do You Know Your American History From the Year You Were Born?

By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker

U.S. history books are filled with tales of brave heroes who fought and died to stay true to the ideals of a wild, new world order focused on equality and freedom. Those iconic characters you read about—from Harriet Tubman and Crazy Horse to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.—represent revolutionaries with progressive ideals who fought relentlessly for what they hoped to make a more perfect union bolstered by a government that would support each of its people in their individual quests for happiness.

Some of our country’s greatest civil advancements have come at a terrible price; paid for with bloody battles, imperfect leadership, and the scars left behind from racism, sexism, and even genocide. Our history includes the mass killing of Native Americans and the scourge of American slavery as much as it includes the Declaration of Independence and the liberation of people from Nazi camps.

America’s greatness comes in even measure with her complex past, with countless demonstrations of unchecked power and the foolish notion of boundless growth; but it is also borne of great showings of empathy and what is possible when, as a nation, we defer to our “better angels.”

To take a look at the rich history of the United States—from battles won in favor of righteousness and equality to periods of extreme darkness—Stacker used a variety of historical sources and photographs to put together a quiz highlighting key events in American history in every year of the past century. On each slide, you’ll find part of a historic photo that matches a clue about American history from that year. On each subsequent slide will be the answer, along with some background on the significance of that event.

Keep reading to test your knowledge of American history, from the Roaring ‘20s and Mickey Mouse’s debut film to the civil rights movement and Watergate.

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