Vaccines have been in the news recently. Over the last few weeks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed vaccination recommendations and gutted an influential committee that recommends which shots Americans should get. Some experts worry that these changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases the US has long had under control.

So this week, we're revisiting a story we made a few years ago about the world's very first vaccine, and the disease it helped eradicate: smallpox.

Smallpox was around for more than 3,000 years and killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century. Then, by 1980, it was gone.

Rahima Banu was the last person in the world to have the deadliest form of smallpox. In 1975, Banu was a toddler growing up in a remote village in Bangladesh when she developed the telltale bumpy rash. Soon, public health workers from around the world showed up at her home to try to keep the virus from spreading. This is her story.

To justify mass deportations, President Trump has invoked an old wartime law: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The Alien Enemies Act was last used after America’s entry into World War II. In response to the Axis countries’ detainment of Americans who were deemed potential spies, the Roosevelt Administration came up with an elaborate plan: find and arrest Germans, Japanese and Italians living in Latin America and detain them in camps in the U.S. The government would use them to exchange for American prisoners of war.

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It's been 50 years since the end of the Vietnam war. In honor of the anniversary, we're revisiting a story about a notorious American military prison on the outskirts of Saigon, called Long Binh Jail.

LBJ wasn’t for captured enemy fighters—it was for American soldiers. These were men who had broken military law. And there were a lot of them. As the unpopular war dragged on, discipline frayed and soldiers started to rebel.

By the summer of 1968, over half the men in Long Binh Jail were locked up on AWOL charges. Some were there for more serious crimes, others for small stuff, like refusing to get a haircut. The stockade had become extremely overcrowded. Originally built to house 400 inmates, it became crammed with over 700 men, more than half African American. On August 29th, 1968, the situation erupted.