Firstly, let’s understand what memes are. According to communication scholar Grant Kien, a meme is content that goes viral through social media, often combining humor and visual elements to convey a message. But memes are more than just funny images or videos - they can also perpetuate harmful stereotypes and reinforce damaging gender dynamics. Memes have emerged as an essential medium of communication, entertainment, and social commentary. These humorous, relatable, and often provocative snippets of digital content have become an integral part of our online lives.

Do you have a question about history? Send us your question at history@time . com and you might find your answer in a future edition of Now You Know. It’s right there any time you buy a plane ticket, register a new address, renew a piece of identification: the box that asks for your middle name or initial. These days, in the United States, the assumption that people will have a middle name is fairly common.

When Arturo Schomburg was a child in Puerto Rico in the 1880s, a teacher once told him that Black people had no real history or achievements worth noting. Incensed but motivated, Schomburg, the child of a Black mother and white German father, set out to prove his so-called educator wrong. He’d later refer to the erasure of Black Puerto Rican achievement as “a conspiracy of silence” and dedicated the rest of his life to documenting and preserving the histories of Black people across the diaspora—African Americans, Afro-Latinos, Africans, and more, according to Vanessa K.

A cop thriller with a title like Reptile comes loaded with inherent promises. Will this be a story about scurrilous human beings whose blood runs cold? At one point a blonde mystery beauty jumps into a swimming pool, revealing a sinuous tattoo traveling the length of her backbone. Is this going to be a great bad-gal story? Or, most thrilling of all, might this be a potboiler involving one or more actual reptiles?

February 18, 2015 7:26 AM EST Frigid temperatures by the Great Lakes are giving tourists a whole new reason to visit Niagara Falls. The famous waterfalls by the Canada-U.S. border were partially frozen this week as temperatures in the area hit 13 degrees below zero on Monday. Though the falls were hardly frozen solid—water continued to flow—layers of ice built up, giving the impression of a winter wonderland amid its icy mist and surrounding snow.