Christopher Klein

The day after a Black woman refused to yield her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, America’s latest battle over civil rights garnered front-page headlines. The news stories capturing the country’s attention in early December 1955 did not concern Rosa Parks, however, but University ...read more

With football now dominated by rocket-armed quarterbacks and fleet-footed receivers, it’s hard to imagine the sport without the forward pass. The play, however, was illegal for nearly four decades after the sport’s inception. When passing was finally permitted in 1906, to improve ...read more

Tailgating before college and professional football games is an American tradition. Starting in late summer and continuing through early winter, temporary tent cities pop up in stadium parking lots across the country. A haze of charcoal smoke fills the air along with laughter, ...read more

During the height of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” in the 1970s and ‘80s, the British government incarcerated hundreds of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitaries inside the notorious Maze Prison. Touted as Europe’s most secure penitentiary, the Maze was thought to ...read more

The Heisman Trophy is awarded annually by the Downtown Athletic Club to the top player in college football’s highest division. While many of those who have hoisted the trophy named for football coach and pioneer John Heisman initially pursued careers in the NFL, the lives of ...read more

The mass escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp in March 1944 remains one of history’s most famous prison breaks. Although the German Luftwaffe designed the Stalag Luft III camp to be escape-proof, the audacious, real-life prison break immortalized in the 1963 movie The ...read more

Seven years after battling Rutgers in what is considered the first college football game, Princeton met Yale on November 30, 1876, in the first college game played on Thanksgiving. Fewer than 1,000 fans—mostly alumni and students—watched Yale win, 2-0, in Hoboken, New Jersey, in ...read more

Decades before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders starred in baseball and football, Jim Thorpe was America’s original multi-sport athlete. A two-time college football All-American and charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Thorpe played six seasons of Major League Baseball ...read more

By the 1930s, leather helmets were a standard part of football uniforms—except for Dick Plasman. The Chicago Bears' receiver never liked hats, and he particularly despised the era’s uncomfortable football helmets that constantly dropped over his eyes and obscured his vision while ...read more

With football fields viewed as proving grounds, the military fielded teams that competed against top college programs during World War II. The Fort Knox Armoraiders, Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks and other service teams played the likes of Notre Dame, Michigan and Ohio State. Military ...read more

Superstitions and sports are as inseparable as Halloween and candy, but a few sports franchises and athletes have endured runs of such poor fortune that they seemingly can only be explained by the supernatural. Hexes such as the Curse of the Bambino and Curse of the Billy Goat ...read more

In a quest to fulfill a centuries-old dream to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the builders of the Panama Canal quickly learned that the construction of a waterway across a narrow ribbon of land looked easier on a map than in reality. The Panamanian isthmus proved to be ...read more

Babe Ruth’s called shot in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series remains one of the most famous home runs in baseball history. What’s much less known, however, is that Ruth’s blast would likely never have occurred except for a remarkable chain of events that started with three ...read more

The World Series has been a stage for some of Major League Baseball's greatest plays as well as its most ignominious moments. From dropped balls to a blown umpire call, here are 10 of the Fall Classic’s most noteworthy blunders. 1. New York Giants' Fred Snodgrass, Game 8, 1912 ...read more

Aviation accidents are so rare that they naturally make front-page news. Some plane crashes, however, have left lasting imprints due to their unique circumstances or indelible images. Although not the deadliest in American history, these seven plane crashes are among the most ...read more

The first baseball player from Latin America to collect 3,000 hits, Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente won four batting crowns, 12 Gold Glove Awards and the 1966 National League Most Valuable Player Award during his iconic career. A 15-time All-Star, the Puerto Rico native led the ...read more

The World Series has produced many moments of incredible drama, but only in 1960 has the Fall Classic ended with a Game 7 home run. That World Series was among the wildest in baseball history as the New York Yankees outscored the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55-27, and second baseman ...read more

Before gaining his greatest fame with the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth was a star with the rival Boston Red Sox. As an ace pitcher and slugging outfielder, Ruth helped Boston win three World Series titles in his first six seasons with the team. Then, after the 1919 season, Red Sox ...read more

For thousands of years, mankind has engineered remarkable structures such as the pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China. More recently, visionary engineers have undertaken massive transportation and communications projects that have pushed the boundaries of human ...read more

Frosty temperatures are typical for National Football League playoff games, but never have football fans and players shivered as much as they did on January 10, 1982, when the Cincinnati Bengals hosted the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship Game. With a kickoff ...read more

The accomplishments of Muhammad Ali are renowned: Olympic gold medalist, heavyweight boxing champion, humanitarian, civil rights activist. But would you believe he also was a Grammy Award nominee in 1964 and 1976?   Trading in his boxing gloves and shorts for black tie and tails, ...read more

Except for one fairytale season in 1969, when they won the World Series, the New York Mets were largely synonymous with futility for the first quarter-century of their existence. The Mets languished in the shadows of their pinstriped neighbors in the Bronx—the New York ...read more

For two years after the American Revolution erupted in the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord, the war unfolded primarily on northern battlefields. Following a pivotal defeat at the 1777 Battle of Saratoga and the French entry to the American side the following year, ...read more

By the time Julius Caesar stepped in front of the Roman Senate on the Ides of March in 44 B.C., the nearly 500-year-old Roman Republic had been ailing for years. Wealth inequality, political gridlock and civil wars had all weakened the republic in the century prior to Caesar’s ...read more

After decades of political dysfunction, civil wars and assassinations that caused the Roman Republic’s downfall, Ancient Rome flourished during two centuries of relative tranquility and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (Latin for “Roman Peace”). Ushered in by the ascension of ...read more

Although bridges are among history’s greatest feats of engineering—andin rare cases they have unexpectedly and catastrophically failed due to structural deficiencies, weather conditions or too much weight. These seven collapses are among history’s deadliest bridge disasters. ...read more

The history of anti-war protests in the United States is as old as the country itself. Every war in American history—even the one that spawned the country—generated internal dissent from pacifists who rejected all wars and from citizens who objected to specific military conflicts ...read more

When the Great Depression hit its lowest ebb in 1933, the unemployment rate exceeded 20 percent and America’s gross domestic product had plummeted by 30 percent. Not everyone, however, lost money during the worst economic downturn in American history. Business titans such as ...read more

The U.S. aviation industry took off in the early 20th century not by transporting people, but by moving America’s mail. At first, airmail pilots flew in flimsy open-cockpit planes through every kind of weather—an experience that ranged from frequently harrowing to sometimes ...read more

It’s common wisdom that William Henry Harrison delivered one killer of a speech after being sworn in as the ninth president of the United States—and it had nothing to do with anything he said.  Ignoring the advice of vigilant mothers everywhere, “Old Tippecanoe” swore off his ...read more

As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence service recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman—Josephine Baker. Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect information on Nazi ...read more

Why were the 1920s such a tough time for America’s labor unions? Call it a backlash against their growing strength. After expanding power during the Progressive Era in the first two decades of the 20th century, organized labor strengthened further during World War I. The U.S. ...read more

Propelled by a Second Industrial Revolution, the United States arose from the ashes of the Civil War to become one of the world’s leading economic powers by the turn of the 20th century. Corporate titans such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan amassed ...read more

Mankind’s love affair with chocolate stretches back more than five millennia. Produced from the seeds of tropical cacao trees native to the rainforests of Central and South America, chocolate was long considered the “food of the gods,” and later, a delicacy for the elite. But for ...read more

As security fears gripped its capital and a global calamity continued to claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, the United States prepared for a presidential inauguration unlike any in its history. With U.S. participation in World War II entering in its fourth ...read more

When the Pilgrims set sail from Europe in 1620, several powerful reasons propelled them across the Atlantic Ocean to make new lives in America—but religious liberty was not their most pressing concern. While it’s popularly thought that the Pilgrims fled England in search of ...read more

As part of an illustrious family of stage actors, John Wilkes Booth was already a familiar figure to many Americans before he entered the presidential box of Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. The Booth name had been emblazoned on playbills of American theaters for decades before ...read more

When it came to waging war at sea during the American Revolution, the mighty British Navy had a vast advantage over its small and inexperienced colonial counterpart. But while the Continental fleet had little impact on the outcome of the war, tens of thousands of citizen sailors ...read more

After Private David Lewis collapsed and died during a basic training exercise at New Jersey’s Fort Dix on February 4, 1976, an investigation into the 19-year-old’s premature death identified a long-dormant, but notorious killer as the cause. Blood tests conducted at the Center ...read more

Each year an average of two hurricanes strike the United States, leaving death and destruction in their wakes. According to Eric Jay Dolin, author of A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes, these powerful storms have caused billions of dollars of ...read more

World War II ended six years and one day after Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, sparked the 20th century’s second global conflict. By the time it concluded on the deck of an American warship on September 2, 1945, World War II had claimed the lives of an ...read more

Theodore Roosevelt, known for his boundless energy and brash, adventurous spirit, possessed one of the biggest personalities of any American president. But, he once said, “It is a quality of strong natures that their failings, like their virtues, should stand out in bold relief.” ...read more

Nearly 150 years before the advent of texts, tweets and e-mail, President Abraham Lincoln became the first “wired president” by embracing the original electronic messaging technology—the telegraph. The 16th president may be remembered for his soaring oratory that stirred the ...read more

Alexander Hamilton abhorred slavery and at a few points in his life worked to help limit it. But any moral objections he held were tempered by his social and political ambitions. Throughout his life, like so many leaders of the time, he allowed or used slavery to advance his ...read more

By February 1945, it was increasingly clear that not only would Adolf Hitler's Third Reich fail to last a millennium as he had hoped; it wouldn’t even survive the spring. With the end of World War II finally in sight, the “Big Three” Allied leaders—U.S. President Franklin D. ...read more

It was the ultimate social-distancing experiment. On September 26, 1991, four men and four women in dark-blue spacesuits waved goodbye to friends, families and a bank of television cameras as they stepped through an airtight door to embark on an unprecedented mission. In spite of ...read more

Shortly before noon on May 6, 1884, Ulysses S. Grant entered the office of his Wall Street brokerage firm a wealthy man. Hours later, he exited a pauper. Thanks to a pyramid scheme operated by his unscrupulous partner, Ferdinand Ward, Grant’s investment firm had instantly ...read more

President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant didn’t meet often in person. But their mutual respect and trust grew deep over the final year of the Civil War as they together steered America and its armies through the most convulsive period in the nation’s history. In his ...read more