While human civilization developed in many places around the world, it first emerged thousands of years ago in the ancient Middle East.  “We see the first cities, the first writing and first technologies originating in Mesopotamia,” says Kelly-Anne Diamond, a visiting assistant ...read more

Halloween may be a secular affair today, dominated by candy, costumes and trick-or-treating, but the holiday is rooted in an annual Celtic pagan festival called Samhain (pronounced "SAH- wane") that was then appropriated by the early Catholic Church some 1,200 years ago. The ...read more

More than 3,800 years after he took power, the ancient Babylonian king Hammurabi is best remembered for the Code of Hammurabi which was inscribed on human-sized stone pillars that he placed in the towns of his realm. But the system of 282 laws was just one of the achievements of ...read more

Even before Jamestown or the Plymouth Colony, the oldest permanent European settlement in what is now the United States was founded in September 1565 by a Spanish soldier named Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in St. Augustine, Florida. Menéndez picked the colony’s name because he ...read more

Thanks in part to the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a small force of Spartan soldiers stayed behind to fight to the death against a vastly larger Persian army, the warriors of Sparta have long been famous for their military prowess and tenacity. Even today, the word ...read more

During the Revolutionary War, when there wasn’t any internet or telephones to provide instantaneous communication over long distances, the connective tissue that held the American colonies together was mail that was transported by horseback riders on the rough-hewn roads between ...read more

When the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention pondered the question of what age a president should be, the big concern wasn’t about the office-holder being too elderly, but too youthful. “George Mason was the principal advocate for age requirements for elective federal ...read more

After Vice President Aaron Burr killed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, Hamilton’s widow, Elizabeth Schuyler “Eliza” Hamilton, had to find a way to go on without her beloved husband. One of the ways she found solace—and honored his memory—was to found two ...read more

Western outlaw Billy the Kid met his demise at about 12:30 a.m. on July 14, 1881, when he went to his friend Pete Maxwell’s home in Fort Sumner, New Mexico in search of a slice of beef for a late-night snack.  As the story goes, Billy—just 21 years old, but already a murderer who ...read more

The Silk Road, a network of land and sea trade routes that connected China and the Far East with Europe from 130 B.C. to 1453 A.D., became a vital source for everything from fabric and leather goods to spices and precious stones. It connected communities and allowed them to share ...read more

Every year, millions of Americans have to amass their financial records and fill out forms—or pay professionals to do it for them—in order to file their federal tax returns. It’s an annual ritual that traditionally takes place in the spring, though in 2020, the Internal Revenue ...read more

Thomas Edison applied for his first patent in 1868, when he was just 21 years old. The famous inventor’s first brainchild was for a device that recorded legislative votes. That was just the start of a career in which he would obtain 1,093 U.S. patents, in addition to another 500 ...read more

On the evening of March 5, 1770, British troops fired into a crowd of angry American colonists in Boston who had taunted and violently harassed them. Five colonists were killed. The event, which became known as the Boston Massacre, helped fuel the outrage against British rule—and ...read more

In an era when wireless communication was still primitive, armies in World War I depended on a range of methods to relay messages between units. Options ranged from the telegraph to telephones to colored flares, mirrors that reflected flashes of sunlight, bugles and trained dogs ...read more

At its peak in the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire was one of the biggest military and economic powers in the world, controlling an expanse that included not just its base in Asia Minor but also much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The empire controlled ...read more

Long before the arrival of European explorers, soldiers and settlers in North America, the portion of the continent north of Mexico was inhabited by as many as 18 million native people. And contrary to the popular perception of American Indians living a nomadic existence, many of ...read more

From the tip of South America to the Arctic, Native Americans developed scores of innovations—from kayaks, protective goggles and baby bottles to birth control, genetically modified food crops and analgesic medications—that enabled them to survive and flourish wherever they ...read more

When Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, it represented a major shift in labor policy. For the first time, the federal government set a minimum wage and established the principle that people—or at least those covered by the law—are entitled to at least a certain ...read more

Whiskey—a liquor whose origins in medieval Scotland or Ireland remain murky—once was an uncommon, exotic liquor in the 13 colonies, where rum, gin and brandy were the strong drinks of choice. But during and immediately after the Revolutionary War, that all changed. Whiskey became ...read more

When a commoner named Liu Bang became the first emperor of the Han Dynasty in 206 B.C., it was the start of a period of more than 400 years that was marked by advances in everything from record-keeping to agriculture to health care. “There were major inventions and developments ...read more

There was a time when traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast meant riding for months in a horse-drawn wagon or stagecoach, or sailing southward to Panama and then crossing the Isthmus to board another ship for a journey up the other coast. But that all changed on May 10, ...read more

The American colonists’ breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn’t a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the 13 colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade ...read more

The Sons of Liberty were a grassroots group of instigators and provocateurs in colonial America who used an extreme form of civil disobedience—threats, and in some cases actual violence—to intimidate loyalists and outrage the British government. The goal of the radicals was to ...read more

The ancient Sumerians, who flourished thousands of years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what today is southern Iraq, built a civilization that in some ways was the ancient equivalent of Silicon Valley. As the late historian Samuel Noah Kramer wrote, “The people ...read more

In January 1919, two months after the fighting in World War I ceased, a conference was convened at Versailles, the former country estate of the French monarchy outside Paris, to work out the terms of a peace treaty to officially end the conflict. Though representatives of nearly ...read more

The Cuban Missile Crisis was among the scariest events of the Cold War. The 13-day showdown brought the world’s two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. In the Fall of 1962 the United States demanded that the Soviets halt construction of newly-discovered missile bases in ...read more

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six minutes later, the first contingent of New York City firefighters—two ladder and two engine companies—had arrived at the stricken ...read more

The Statue of Liberty, which towers 305 feet, six inches over New York Harbor, is one of the most instantly recognizable symbols of America. It has inspired countless souvenir replicas and been referenced in everything from posters for war bonds to the final scene of the 1968 ...read more

It wasn’t that long ago that Venezuela, which possesses the world’s largest crude oil reserves, was a relatively stable democracy with one of Latin America’s fastest-rising economies. It was a nation so awash in petroleum revenues that the socialist government of the late former ...read more

At the height of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine under Joseph Stalin, starving people roamed the countryside, desperate for something, anything to eat. In the village of Stavyshche, a young peasant boy watched as the wanderers dug into empty gardens with their bare hands. Many were ...read more

Young women became trapped by tables, bulky equipment and doors that locked or opened the wrong way as flames enveloped the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the Asch Building in New York City’s Greenwich Village on March 25, 1911. As people struggled to escape, several fell into ...read more

As the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe and leader of the D-Day invasion, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower became legendary for his ability to get officers and armies from different nations to work together to defeat Nazi Germany. But if needed, he was also willing to take ...read more

The economy boomed during the Roaring Twenties and rising incomes gave ordinary Americans access to enticing new conveniences, including washing machines, refrigerators, cars and other luxuries that would have once seemed unattainable. But for many, that wasn’t enough. With ...read more

When the United States chose its first president in 1788, Americans turned to George Washington who, as an army general, had led them to victory over the British and independence. The acclaim that he had received as a war hero made him a unifying figure and gave him tremendous ...read more

As a U.S. Navy lieutenant overseeing logistical movement of arms at Guadalcanal Air Base in the Solomon Islands and other posts during World War II, Richard Nixon’s unit was subjected to such regular Japanese air bombings, it became known as “Murder, Incorporated.” But once the ...read more

One of Germany’s most feared and effective weapons during World War I was its fleet of submarines—known as U-boats—that roamed the Atlantic, sneaking up underwater on British merchant ships and destroying them with torpedoes. During the course of the war, they sank more than ...read more

From George Washington, who was a skilled horseman, to Donald Trump, whose longtime passion is golf, most U.S. presidents played various sports in their youth, and many continued their athletic pursuits while in the White House. “Presidents tend to be extraordinarily ...read more

As the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the European theater, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower is remembered as one of the most masterful military figures in history, the man behind the bold and superbly-executed Normandy invasion in June 1944 that led to Nazi Germany’s defeat less ...read more

If not for Naval Reserve officer Lyndon Johnson’s sudden need to relieve himself before a bomber flight during World War II, he might never have taken over the Oval Office after John F. Kennedy’s death, and there might never have been a Great Society program, Medicare or an ...read more

Eight decades ago hordes of migrants poured into California in search of a place to live and work. But those refugees weren’t from other countries, they were Americans and former inhabitants of the Great Plains and the Midwest who had lost their homes and livelihoods in the Dust ...read more

Ronald Reagan is often lauded as the U.S. President who won the Cold War, by orchestrating a massive arms buildup that the Soviet Union couldn’t afford to match, and by giving a famous 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in which he challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to ...read more

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, as part of a plan to eliminate any potential challenge to Japanese conquests in Asia. The attack compelled the United States to enter World War II as a ...read more

Benedict Arnold is now known mostly as a notorious Revolutionary War traitor who secretly tried to sell out the fort at West Point in exchange for a payoff and a commission in the British Army. But except for a few unfortunate twists of fate, Arnold instead might have gone down ...read more

North American colonists’ warfare against Native Americans often was horrifyingly brutal. But one method they appear to have used—perhaps just once—shocks even more than all the bloody slaughter: The gifting of blankets and linens contaminated with smallpox. The virus causes a ...read more

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the incessant boom of artillery abruptly went silent along the Western Front in France.  An American medical officer, Stanhope Bayne-Jones, suddenly could hear water dripping off a bush next to him. “It seemed ...read more

Anyone on social media knows the power of memes to drive home an argument and influence others’ views. But the tactic of using a viral image to persuade people goes back to long before the existence of the Internet or Facebook. One of its earliest practitioners was ...read more