The Donner Party started its trip dangerously late in the pioneer season. Travel on the California Trail followed a tight schedule. Emigrants needed to head west late enough in the spring for there to be grass available for their pack animals, but also early enough so they could ...read more

Today the terms “left wing” and “right wing” are used as symbolic labels for liberals and conservatives, but they were originally coined in reference to the physical seating arrangements of politicians during the French Revolution.  The split dates to the summer of 1789, when ...read more

1. Samuel Fuqua Missouri-born Samuel Fuqua had a front row seat to the devastation at Pearl Harbor from aboard USS Arizona, a battleship that was heavily bombed during the first wave of the attack. The 42-year-old lieutenant commander was having breakfast when the ship’s air ...read more

Americans first began the custom of weekday voting in 1845, when Congress passed a federal law designating the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November as Election Day.  Before then, states were allowed to hold elections any time they pleased within a 34-day period ...read more

Since the late-1910s, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had been at the forefront of India’s quest to shake off the yoke of British colonial domination, otherwise known as the “Raj.” The thin and abstemious former lawyer had led civil disobedience against colonial policies, encouraged ...read more

On August 4, 1944, police in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam raided a warehouse and arrested eight Jews who were hiding in an annex disguised behind a bookcase. Among those captured was Anne Frank, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who had spent over two years living in the cramped safehouse with ...read more

For millennia, edged weapons such as swords, knives and daggers were the arms of choice for warriors around the globe. These razor-sharp blades inspired fear and fascination and helped change the course of military campaigns. In some cases, individual weapons were even given ...read more

“Luck,” the playwright Tennessee Williams once wrote, “is believing you’re lucky.” That may be true, but people around the world have always tried to boost their good fortunes with talismans, symbols and trinkets—including a few that may seem bizarre today. From phallic charms to ...read more

In July 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s military invasion of Egypt, a group of French soldiers accidentally made a groundbreaking archaeological discovery. While working to strengthen the defenses of a sunbaked fort near the Nile Delta town of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid), they ...read more

Before there was Air Force One, there was the presidential yacht. Dating back to the 19th century, America’s chief executives utilized navy ships and other vessels for recreation and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Nearly a dozen different ships acted as the “Floating White ...read more

Giuseppe Garibaldi is best known for leading military campaigns that helped unify Italy, but the famed freedom fighter came very close to taking another notable assignment. And his brush with the Union blue remains one of the most curious tales of the Civil War. An Italian ...read more

Most Americans are familiar with France, Spain, Holland and England’s colonial history in the United States, but lesser-known is New Sweden, a Swedish holding that once spanned parts of Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The upstart settlement dates to the early 17th ...read more

The title of “history’s most famous traveler” usually goes to Marco Polo, the great Venetian wayfarer who visited China in the 13th century. For sheer distance covered, however, Polo trails far behind the Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta. Though little known outside the Islamic world, ...read more

The United States may have been founded on the idea that all men are created equal, but during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slaveholding was common among the statesmen who served as president. All told, at least 12 chief executives—over a quarter of all American ...read more

Master sword fighters are a recurring motif in fiction, but there were also several historical figures who were renowned for their ability to wield a blade with deadly precision. From soldiers and samurai to duelists and expert fencers, take a look back at the adventures of six ...read more

The role of the United States’ first lady traditionally goes to the president’s spouse, but in instances where the chief executive was a bachelor or widower, it has occasionally fallen to children, sisters or other close family members. Over a dozen of these “first hostesses” ...read more

The bicycle as we know it evolved in the 19th century thanks to the work of several different inventors. A German baron named Karl von Drais made the first major development when he created a steerable, two-wheeled contraption in 1817. This clunky wooden prototype didn’t include ...read more

Floods were considered a blessing by certain civilizations—the Egyptians relied on the Nile’s yearly overflow for fertile soil—but they also stand as some of history’s most devastating natural disasters. Whether due to heavy rains, storm surges or busted dams, deluges have often ...read more

Fashion has always played a role in politics. Monarchs and heads of state have used clothing to cultivate an image, and in some cases their styles became so iconic that they filtered into the mainstream. From Julius Caesar to Nelson Mandela, check out 10 of history’s most ...read more

1. Few civilizations knew how to tie one on better than the Egyptians. According to archaeological research at the Temple of Mut in Luxor, the ancient inhabitants of the Nile River Valley had a raucous “Festival of Drunkenness” that occurred at least once per year during the ...read more

1. Sam Patch Rhode Island native Sam Patch had a hardscrabble upbringing as a child laborer in a cotton mill, but he later became America’s first celebrity daredevil after he discovered he could draw a paying crowd by staging terrifying leaps off waterfalls, bridges and river ...read more

In 1859, the musician and performer Daniel Decatur Emmett composed “Dixie,” a minstrel song that included the now-famous refrain “Away, away, away down south in Dixie!” The song was a smash hit in its day—Abraham Lincoln called it “one of the best tunes I have ever heard”—and it ...read more

On October 27, 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company opened the first line of what is now the New York City subway system. For the cost of a nickel per ride, passengers could travel over nine miles from City Hall all the way to 145th Street in Harlem. “For the first time ...read more

The Aleutian Islands are known for their rugged, treeless tundra and almost perpetually foul weather, but during the early days of World War II, they were considered a valuable piece of real estate. Fresh off their success at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were looking to consolidate ...read more

For nearly a century in the second millennium B.C., a mysterious band of maritime warriors known as the “Sea Peoples” wreaked havoc on the Mediterranean. “They came from the sea in their warships,” reads one ancient inscription, “and none could stand against them.” There are ...read more

In the summer of 1807, the city of Richmond, Virginia, played host to one of the most remarkable trials in early American history. The case involved several legal luminaries, but its undisputed star was the defendant, 51-year-old Aaron Burr. The New Jersey native had only ...read more

Many of the details of the Popham colony have been lost to history, but in its heyday the tiny settlement in Maine was considered a direct rival of Jamestown. Both colonies got their start in 1606, when the British King James I granted the Virginia Company a charter to establish ...read more

On the night of May 21, 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh touched down at France’s Le Bourget Field, having completed history’s first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Upon exiting the Spirit of St. Louis, the 25-year-old American was mobbed by a crowd of 150,000 people ...read more

There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about the content of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. In full, it stipulates that, “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives ...read more

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca first arrived in the New World in 1528 as the royal treasurer on a Spanish voyage of discovery. When he finally left eight years later as one of the expedition’s sole survivors, he had walked across the American continent, made first contact with dozens ...read more

In the early morning hours of April 28, 1944, an Allied fleet slinked toward the coast of southern England. Along with a lone British corvette, the flotilla included eight American tank landing ships, or LSTs, each one of them filled to the brim with soldiers from the U.S. ...read more

At around 6 p.m. on April 22, 1915, a pale yellow cloud crept toward the Allied lines at Ypres, Belgium. Having first appeared from German positions several hundred feet away, the 4-mile-wide wall of vapor rode the evening breeze across no-man’s-land and descended over trenches ...read more

1. When Caesar Met the Cilician Pirates According to the ancient historian Plutarch, a young Julius Caesar was at the center of one of Rome’s most unusual kidnapping cases. The incident unfolded in 75 B.C., when a band of Cilician pirates waylaid the 25-year-old as he was ...read more

1. Herostratus and the Temple of Artemis “Apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on anything so grand,” the writer Antipater of Sidon once wrote of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The temple was an architectural marvel and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but ...read more

Dr. Robert Ballard couldn’t sleep. It was the early morning of September 1, 1985, and the 43-year-old oceanographer was lying in his bunk aboard the research vessel Knoor. Ballard had led the ship to the North Atlantic in search of the long-lost wreck of Titanic, but despite ...read more

The Pledge of Allegiance has been used in the United States for over 100 years, yet the 31-word oath recited today differs significantly from the original draft. The idea of a verbal vow to the American flag first gained traction in 1885, when a Civil War veteran named Colonel ...read more

1. Baron von Steuben During the early stages of the revolution, the Continental Army had a reputation for being disorganized, undisciplined and poorly drilled. That started to change in early 1778, when the extravagantly named Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin, the Baron ...read more

In early 1862, the Union and the Confederacy were locked in one of the most influential arms races of the Civil War. While their navies still relied on wooden ships, both sides had gambled on building revolutionary “ironclad” vessels that boasted steam engines, hulking cannons ...read more

1. Yellowstone is bigger than two U.S. states. At 3,472 square miles—over 2.2 million acres—Yellowstone is larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The vast majority of its territory is situated in Wyoming, but it also creeps into neighboring Montana and ...read more

The United States spent the first two-and-a-half years of World War I watching from the sidelines, yet by early 1917, American involvement in the conflict was looking increasingly likely. Isolationist sentiment remained high—President Woodrow Wilson had only recently won ...read more

For Andrew Carnegie, books were an indispensable tool for self-improvement and social uplift. Born poor in Scotland in 1835, the future industrialist immigrated to the United States as an adolescent and settled in Pennsylvania with his family. By age 13, he was already working ...read more

In the frantic weeks that followed the Pearl Harbor attack, many Americans believed that enemy raids on the continental United States were imminent. On December 9, 1941, unsubstantiated reports of approaching aircraft had caused a minor invasion panic in New York City and sent ...read more

Even before he began wooing a woman 30 years his junior, John Tyler had already endured a tumultuous start to his term as president. The former Virginia senator had been elected vice president as part of William Henry Harrison’s famed “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” ticket, but had ...read more

“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we ...read more

Near the end of his classic 1606 play Macbeth, William Shakespeare included a scene in which the doomed title character says that his enemies, “have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, / But, bear-like, I must fight the course.” The line might seem inconsequential to modern ...read more

1. Alexander Hamilton The United States’ first secretary of the treasury was always tight-lipped about his upbringing, which he called “the subject of the most humiliating criticism,” but there’s little doubt that it was a struggle. Born in 1755 (some sources say 1757) on the ...read more

Theodore Roosevelt was never a fan of idle vacations. Whether ranching in the Dakotas, cougar hunting in Arizona, or going on a yearlong safari in Africa, his travels had always involved hardship and risk—two of the key components of what he once famously termed the “strenuous ...read more

During World War II, American servicemen regularly huddled around radios to listen to the “Zero Hour,” an English-language news and music program that was produced in Japan and beamed out over the Pacific. The Japanese intended for the show to serve as morale-sapping propaganda, ...read more