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Prior to today, I didnt knew that magazine is derived from the Arabic word “makhazin” which means storehouse and that the World’s first English magazine was published by Daniel Defoe in 1704. Ever since that time millions of magazines have been created and consumed catering every imaginable taste. Google is now making these magazines available online via its Google Book Search program:

Today, we’re announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony. Are you a baseball history fanatic? Try a search for [hank aaron catching babe] on Google Book Search. You’ll find a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Hank Aaron, written as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s original record for career home runs. You can read the article in full color and in its original context, just as you would in the printed magazine. Scroll back a few pages, for example, and you’ll find a two-page spread on 1973’s fall fashions. If you’d like to read further, you can click on "Browse all issues" to view issues from across the decades.

Explore other publications, like Popular Science, New York Magazine, or (for you physics enthusiasts) the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, to rediscover historical interviews, do-it-yourself articles, and even a piece on canine eyewear. In many cases, these magazines aren’t just history as history, but history as perspective — a way of understanding today.