HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. Articles with the “HISTORY.com Editors” byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen.
On June 3, 1943, a group of U.S. sailors marches through downtown Los Angeles, carrying clubs and other makeshift weapons and attacking anyone wearing a “zoot suit”—the baggy wool pants, oversized coats and porkpie hats favored by many young men of color at the time. ...read more
Beginning on the night of May 31, 1921, thousands of white citizens in Tulsa, Oklahoma descended on the city’s predominantly black Greenwood District, burning homes and businesses to the ground and killing hundreds of people. Long mischaracterized as a race riot, rather than mass ...read more
On May 12, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt’s trip to San Francisco is captured on moving-picture film, making him one of the first presidents to have an official activity recorded in that medium. READ MORE: 7 Little-Known Legacies of Teddy Roosevelt A cameraman named H.J. ...read more
In the early hours of May 9, 1970, a frazzled President Richard Nixon embarks upon what his Chief of Staff will describe as "the weirdest day so far" of his presidency. Preoccupied with the recent Kent State shootings and the unrest that has spread to college campuses across the ...read more
On May 4, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony debuts at Vienna’s Theater am Kärntnertor. Having lost his hearing years earlier, the celebrated composer nonetheless “conducts” the first performance of his Ninth Symphony, now widely considered to be one of the ...read more
The following content is sponsored by Legacy Recordings. On May 1, 1975, Willie Nelson releases “Red Headed Stranger,” a concept album that would become the country music maverick’s first smash hit. Born and raised in Texas, Nelson made his way to the country mecca of Nashville, ...read more
On November 4, 2016, the Paris Agreement comes into effect. A sweeping international pledge to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, the Agreement remains a potential turning point in the history of human relations with the Earth’s climate. With one of the world’s most prolific ...read more
On December 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, the United Nations adopts a new treaty for the purpose of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was a revolutionary attempt to forestall climate change, an admirable ...read more
On December 17, 1963, one of the first major pieces of environmental legislation in the United States becomes law. The Clean Air Act empowers federal and state agencies to research and regulate air pollution, marking a major expansion of government efforts to fight back against ...read more
The Clean Water Act becomes law on October 18, 1972. After centuries of reckless treatment of American rivers, streams, lakes and bays, the landmark act institutes strict regulations on pollution and quality controls for the nation’s waters for the first time in its history. The ...read more
On December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signs the Endangered Species Act into law. The act, which Nixon called for the previous year, is considered one of the most significant and influential environmental laws in American history. The government started taking action to ...read more
In March of 1958, Dr. Charles David Keeling begins regularly measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai'i. Over the ensuing years, his research will reveal what is now known as the Keeling Curve: a graph of continuously-taken ...read more
On December 2, 1970, a new federal agency opens its doors. Created in response to the dawning realization that human activity can have major effects on the planet, the Environmental Protection Agency heralded a new age of government action on behalf of the environment. Concerns ...read more
On June 28, 2007, the United States removes one of its most commonly-used national symbols from its List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. The de-listing of the bald eagle, which had been close to vanishing from North America around the middle of the 20th century, was one of ...read more
On December 13, 2019, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg is named Time magazine's Person of the Year. The Swedish climate activist became the first Person of the Year to be born in the 21st century and the youngest ever to receive the honor. Thunberg took to activism early, convincing ...read more
In the scientific journal Nature on May 16, 1985, three scientists from the British Antarctic Survey announce their detection of abnormally low levels of ozone over the South Pole. Their discovery, commonly known as the Ozone Hole, became a palpable example of mankind's ability ...read more
Pirates had not captured a ship sailing under the American flag since the 1820s until April 8, 2009, when the MV Maersk Alabama was hijacked off the coast of Somalia. The high-profile incident drew worldwide attention to the problem of piracy, commonly believed to be a thing of ...read more
On April 30, 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes reports on abuse of prisoners by American military forces at Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq. The report, which featured graphic photographs showing U.S. military personnel torturing and abusing prisoners, shocked the American public and ...read more
On April 30, 1997, at exactly 12:11 pm, London's iconic Big Ben clock stops ticking. For 54 minutes, the most famous clock in the world failed to keep time. Completed in 1859, Big Ben has a long history of technical issues. The first bell cast for the tower cracked before it ...read more
On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for “an idea of linked information systems,” computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee released the source code for the world’s first web browser and editor. Originally called Mesh, the browser that he dubbed WorldWideWeb became ...read more
On April 8, 1990, 18-year-old Ryan White dies of pneumonia, due to having contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. He had been given six months to live in December of 1984 but defied expectations and lived for five more years, during which time his story helped educate the ...read more
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke the color barrier in a sport that had been segregated for more than 50 ...read more
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the Apollo Space program (1961-1975) and was supposed to be the third lunar landing mission, but the three astronauts aboard never reached the moon. Instead the crew and ground control team scrambled through a hair-raising ...read more
While St. Patrick’s Day is now associated with wearing green, parades (when they're not canceled) and beer, the holiday is grounded in history that dates back more than 1,500 years. The earliest known celebration was held on March 17, 1631, marking the anniversary of the death of ...read more
On September 28, 2018, the cargo ship Venta Maersk docks in St. Petersburg, Russia, more than a month after departing from Vladivostok on the other side of the country. The successful traversal of the Russian Arctic was a landmark moment for the international shipping industry, ...read more
After decades of environmental damage and legal wrangling, General Electric finally begins its government-mandated efforts to clean the Hudson River on May 15, 2009. One of America's largest and most prestigious corporations, GE had dumped harmful chemicals into the river for ...read more
On Valentine's Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of Earth. The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot, depicts our planet as a nearly indiscernible speck roughly the size of a pixel. Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyagers 1 and ...read more
On March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a 600-person civil rights demonstration ends in violence when marchers are attacked and beaten by white state troopers and sheriff’s deputies. The day's events became known as "Bloody Sunday." The demonstrators—led by civil rights activists ...read more
Rachel Carson’s watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment. Its publication is often viewed as the beginning of the ...read more
1. Washington had only a grade-school education. The first president’s formal schooling ended when he was 11 years old, after his father died. That event cut young George off from the opportunity to be educated abroad in England, a privilege that had been afforded to his older ...read more
After weeks of discussions among legislators, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the 45th President, Donald Trump, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on December 18, 2019. The vote fell largely along party lines: 230 in favor, 197 against and 1 present. ...read more
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of the United States, Great Britain and France to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany. In June 1948, the simmering tensions between the Soviet Union ...read more
In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. When an epidemic spreads beyond a country’s borders, that’s when the disease officially becomes a pandemic. Communicable diseases existed during humankind’s hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian ...read more
On May 27, 1941, the British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000. On February 14, 1939, the 823-foot Bismarck was launched at Hamburg. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler hoped that the state-of-the-art ...read more
In October 1787, the first in a series of 85 essays arguing for ratification of the proposed U.S. Constitution appeared in the Independent Journal, under the pseudonym “Publius.” Addressed to “the People of the State of New York,” the essays—now known as the Federalist ...read more
On January 29, 2002, in his first State of the Union address since the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush describes Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." Just over a year into his presidency and several months into a war which would eventually become the ...read more
In fewer than four years, more than 1.1 million people were killed by Nazi forces at Auschwitz under the command of Adolf Hitler. People were crammed into cattle cars with little food or toilets and transported to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland. Upon arriving, they were ...read more
During a break in the action of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22nd, 1984, audiences first see a commercial that is now widely agreed to be one of the most powerful and effective of all time. Apple's "1984" spot, featuring a young woman throwing a sledgehammer through a screen on ...read more
When British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and his army surrendered to General George Washington’s American force and its French allies at the Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781, it was more than just military win. The outcome in Yorktown, Virginia marked the conclusion of ...read more
On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Lincoln ...read more
The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919 at the Palace of Versailles in Paris at the end of World War I, codified peace terms between the victorious Allies and Germany. The Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war and imposed harsh penalties in ...read more
Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general who led the South’s attempt at secession during the Civil War. He challenged Union forces during the war’s bloodiest battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg, before surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865 at Appomattox ...read more
Daniel Boone was an early American frontiersman who gained fame for his hunting and trailblazing expeditions through the Cumberland Gap, a natural pass through the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Boone achieved folk hero status during his lifetime, but ...read more
The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, is an independent federal regulatory agency tasked with protecting investors and capital, overseeing the stock market and proposing and enforcing federal securities laws. Prior to the SEC’s creation, oversight of the trade in ...read more
Samuel Adams was a Founding Father of the United States and a political theorist who protested British taxation without representation, uniting the American colonies in the fight for independence during the Revolutionary War. He was the second cousin of John Adams and the ...read more
Born into obscurity in the British West Indies, Alexander Hamilton made his reputation during the Revolutionary War and became one of America’s most influential Founding Fathers. He was an impassioned champion of a strong federal government, and played a key role in defending and ...read more
On December 8, 1942, the architect and engineer Albert Kahn–known as “the man who built Detroit”–dies at his home there. He was 73 years old. Kahn and his assistants built more than 2,000 buildings in all, mostly for Ford and General Motors. According to his obituary in The New ...read more
An arms race occurs when two or more countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain military and political superiority over one another. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is perhaps the largest and most expensive arms race in ...read more
Protesters in Hong Kong clashed with police, fire consumed an 850-year-old cathedral in Paris, the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup and President Donald Trump became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. These are only a few of the most prominent events ...read more
Alexander Graham Bell, best known for his invention of the telephone, revolutionized communication as we know it. His interest in sound technology was deep-rooted and personal, as both his wife and mother were deaf. While there’s some controversy over whether Bell was the true ...read more
