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The Museum of American History's new permanent exhibition, "The Price of Freedom," features personal artifacts from 16 conflicts involving U.S. troops. Hear NPR's Scott Simon, Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient Al Rascon and curator David Allison.

This week in 1814, the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, made publishing history. His poem "The Corsair" sold out its entire first run, all 10,000 copies, in London in one day. "The Corsair" is the tale of a pirate captain willing to risk the love of his life to save a slave in a Turkish harem. Steven Jones, a Byron scholar who teaches at Chicago's Loyola University, discusses the great work.

When Space Shuttle Columbia's mission ended in tragedy, a piece of history was rediscovered. An Israeli astronaut on Columbia had taken a drawing into space, a view of Earth, as seen from the moon. The scene was imagined by a teenager who didn't live to see the moon landings. The young artist was Petr Ginz, who died in a Nazi concentration camp. Since the Columbia disaster, the boy's wartime diaries resurfaced, and they've now been published in the Czech Republic. Katerina Zachovalova reports.

As Congress prepares to launch hearings into questionable intelligence provided on Iraq's weapons capability, President Bush dismisses as "revisionist history" accusations that his administration embellished reports to bolster the case for war. In Britain, Parliament hears testimony from two former members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet who say the government knowingly misrepresented data on Iraq. Hear NPR's David Welna, NPR's Guy Raz and chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

New Hampshire indentured servant turned novelist Harriet Wilson wrote Our Nig more than a century ago. The work is the first known publication by an African American woman. Now Wilson will become the first person of color in New Hampshire history to have a monument in her likeness.

This year's games welcome the largest proportion of women Olympians in history. Among them are 50 Muslim women, who defied the odds to attend. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports.

Author Steve Coll details the complicated family history of Osama bin Laden, one of 54 children born to Mohamed bin Laden. The elder bin Laden transformed himself from an illiterate bricklayer into an immensely wealthy and powerful businessman.

In a new anthology of baseball essays, sportswriter Stefan Fatsis celebrates his beloved, 31-year-old baseball glove. He talks to Robert Siegel about how he set out to find out about his mitt's history and what he learned along the way.

In 1851, two chess masters sat down for a practice game in London. What should have been a throwaway game intensified and was quickly dubbed "the immortal game." David Shenk, author of a new history of chess called The Immortal Game, describes the historic match.

In a tiny village in central Cameroon, musician Blick Bassy discovered his sound. Bassy now lives in Paris, but he continues to sing in his native language, Bassa. Bassa is one of the 250 or so languages spoken in Cameroon, and Bassy fears it is dying out.