Sarah Pruitt

Perched on the southwestern part of the Iberian peninsula, Portugal turned to the boundless Atlantic Ocean as its only outlet to the wider world. As early as 1341, Portuguese sailors had made their first forays into the tempting waters that lay beyond their shores, exploring the ...read more

Two hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, all seven continents were united in a single massive supercontinent known as Pangaea. After they slowly broke apart and settled into the positions we know today, each continent developed independently from the ...read more

Eighteen minutes after noon on February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the basement parking garage below the north tower of the World Trade Center. The massive explosion killed six people and wounded more than 1,000, with some 50,000 people forced to evacuate the twin towers as ...read more

Even while joining forces with the United States and Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union launched a massive effort to collect intelligence on the secret Anglo-American atomic bomb program that would become the Manhattan Project. As part of ...read more

In early 1962, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officially authorized a plan to build the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, it came just months after President John F. Kennedy announced the U.S. goal of sending astronauts to the moon. The vision for the ...read more

What people ate in colonial America largely depended on where they lived. Due to differences in climate, available natural resources and cultural heritage of the colonists themselves, the daily diet of a New Englander differed greatly from his counterparts in the Middle ...read more

The way people watch television has changed dramatically since the medium first burst onto the scene in the 1940s and ‘50s and forever transformed American life. Decade after decade, TV technology has steadily advanced: Color arrived in the 1960s, followed by cable in the ‘70s, ...read more

In early 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy approved a request from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to install wiretaps on the home and office of a New York City-based lawyer named Stanley David Levison. According to FBI informants, Levison had been an influential member of the ...read more

Title IX, the landmark gender equity law passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, banned sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Its protections would open doors for girls and women in admission, academic majors, teaching positions, vocational ...read more

On May 18, 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, he took what he saw as a vital step toward fulfilling his promise of a “New Deal” for the American people. The Great Depression had dragged on for more than three years by that point, ...read more

Philip Mountbatten married then-Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and the pair's marriage became the longest royal union in history. Just as his wife is the longest-serving British monarch, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was the longest-serving royal consort in British history. ...read more

Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, died April 9, 2021 at the age of 99. He married the future queen in 1947 and served steadfastly by her side for more than 70 years, as she became the longest-serving monarch in British history. As Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of ...read more

On November 25, 1960, three sisters—Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal—were reported killed in an “automobile accident.” Reports said a car they were riding in plunged over a cliff in the Dominican Republic. At least, that was the story in El Caribe, a newspaper sanctioned ...read more

How did a high-standing Indian who signed away his ancestral lands in the Deep South become a general for the Confederacy during the Civil War? And why did he fight so fiercely against other Native people during the conflict? Stand Watie lived during a convulsive time for his ...read more

Women served on both sides of World War II, in official military roles that came closer to combat than ever before. The Soviet Union, in particular, mobilized its women: Upward of 800,000 would enlist in the Red Army during the war, with more than half of these serving in ...read more

In November 1983, Rev. Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming only the second Black presidential candidate (after Shirley Chisholm in 1972) to compete at the national level. In doing so, he claimed to be fighting for the rights ...read more

Though music had become ubiquitous in American life even before the Civil War, the conflict between North and South launched it to new heights of importance. For the more than 3 million soldiers who joined the Union and Confederate armies from 1861-65, music provided a backdrop ...read more

On August 28, 1963, in front of a crowd of nearly 250,000 people spread across the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the Baptist preacher and civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln ...read more

It should come as no surprise that people living in the original 13 colonies lived harder lives than contemporary Americans, without the benefit of the modern conveniences. But colonists still found ways to get their work done, make themselves a little more comfortable—and even ...read more

While most Americans today probably can’t imagine the Christmas season without Santa Claus, Christmas trees, hanging stockings and giving gifts, most of those traditions didn’t get started until the 19th century. In the pre-Revolutionary War era, people living in the original 13 ...read more

The peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next is a hallmark of American democracy. After John Adams was inaugurated as second president of the United States in 1797, he wrote to his wife, Abigail, describing George Washington's actions, "When the Ceremony was over ...read more

As Margaret Thatcher took office as Britain’s first female prime minister in May 1979, she confronted a nation mired in economic recession. Businesses were failing, and inflation and unemployment were rising. Thatcher immediately set out to turn the economic situation around, ...read more

Queen Elizabeth II is such an institution that it’s easy to forget she wasn’t supposed to have become queen at all. Born in 1926, Elizabeth was the daughter of King George V’s second son, and had little expectation of succeeding to the throne until her uncle, King Edward VIII, ...read more

Concluded during the nearly 100-year period from the Revolutionary War to the aftermath of the Civil War, some 368 treaties would define the relationship between the United States and Native Americans for centuries to come. The treaties were based on the fundamental idea that ...read more

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 argued over a lot of things, but one of their biggest debates was over how the United States should elect its president. Some among the Founding Fathers believed that direct nationwide election by the people would be the most ...read more

The evil green-skinned witch flying on her magic broomstick may be a Halloween icon—and a well-worn stereotype. But the actual history behind how witches came to be associated with such an everyday household object is anything but dull. It’s not clear exactly when the broom ...read more

In the early morning hours of March 4, 1801, John Adams, the second president of the United States, quietly left Washington, D.C. under cover of darkness. He would not attend the inauguration ceremony held later that day for his former friend—now political rival—Thomas Jefferson, ...read more

The U.S. Constitution, written in 1787 and ratified by nine of the original 13 states a year later, is the world’s longest-surviving written constitution. But that doesn’t mean it has stayed the same over time. The Founding Fathers intended the document to be flexible in order ...read more

It’s impossible to separate the history of the United States from the history of its post office. After all, Benjamin Franklin was appointed the nation’s first postmaster general all the way back in 1775, after his fellow colonists rebelled against Britain’s Royal Mail and ...read more

By the time Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras, Louisiana early on the morning of August 29, 2005, the flooding had already begun. At 5 a.m., an hour before the storm struck land, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the system of levees and floodwalls in ...read more

Hurricane Katrina, the tropical cyclone that struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, was the third-strongest hurricane to hit the United States in its history at the time. With maximum sustained winds of 175 mph, the storm killed a total of 1,833 people and left millions homeless ...read more

By the time the final battle over ratification of the 19th Amendment went down in Nashville, Tennessee in the summer of 1920, 72 years had passed since the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York.  More than 20 nations around the world had granted women the ...read more

In the fall of 1918, as the deadly second wave of the influenza pandemic known as the “Spanish flu” swept across the nation, schools in cities around the United States closed in order to limit contagion. But in the nation’s two largest urban centers, New York and Chicago, public ...read more

As the presidential election year of 1896 began, things were looking rosy for the Republicans. But the emergence of a brash, young politician, William Jennings Bryan, soon turned the tide. Bryan’s campaign laid bare the diverging interests of those whose livelihoods were linked ...read more

As the 20th century dawned, tuberculosis—otherwise known as consumption, “white plague” or “white death”—had become the leading cause of death in the United States. The dreaded lung disease killed an estimated 450 Americans a day, most of them between the ages of 15 and 44. At ...read more

Ever since America dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, the question has persisted: Was that magnitude of death and destruction really needed to end World War II? American leadership apparently thought so. A few days earlier, just 16 hours after the ...read more

Over centuries, billions of people have read the Bible. Scholars have spent their lives studying it, while rabbis, ministers and priests have focused on interpreting, teaching and preaching from its pages. As the sacred text for two of the world’s leading religions, Judaism and ...read more

In the early morning hours of August 1, 1943, a total of 177 B-24 Liberator bombers took off from Allied airfields near Benghazi, Libya, heading northeast over the Mediterranean Sea with more than 1,700 U.S. airmen aboard. Operation Tidal Wave—one of the most daring, and costly, ...read more

As the presidential election of 1800 approached, Americans were more divided than ever before. The incumbent President John Adams faced off against Vice President Thomas Jefferson, the former secretary of state and author of the Declaration of Independence. To Jefferson and his ...read more

During the hot, humid summer of 1793, thousands of Philadelphians got horribly sick, suffering from fevers and chills, jaundiced skin, stomach pains and vomit tinged black with blood. By the end of August, as more and more people began dying from this mysterious affliction, ...read more

In the summer of 1967, simmering tensions between the police and the black community in Detroit, Michigan exploded into five chaotic days of looting, arson and violence. In one of the worst riots in American history, some 43 people lost their lives and thousands more were injured ...read more

In the summer of 1945, as World War II drew to a close, the U.S. economy was poised on the edge of an uncertain future. Since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call in late 1940 for the United States to serve as the “arsenal of democracy,” American industry had stepped up to meet ...read more

It’s one of the most iconic photos in American history. A woman in ragged clothing holds a baby as two more children huddle close, hiding their faces behind her shoulders. The mother squints into the distance, one hand lifted to her mouth and anxiety etched deep in the lines on ...read more

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard trying to disperse a crowd of student demonstrators at Kent State University opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others. More than any other single event, the Kent State shootings would become a focal point of ...read more

In the fall of 1918, the United States was approaching a midterm election like none other before. Not only were President Woodrow Wilson and his fellow Democrats trying to keep control of Congress during the home stretch of World War I—they were trying to do so in the middle of ...read more

During the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of young Americans rejected the stable, comfortable middle-class life their parents had built in the years after World War II, driven instead by a spirit of rebellion that would leave a lasting impact on the nation. But long hair and ...read more

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the United States was entering the fourth year of the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in the nation’s history. The stock market had fallen a staggering 75 percent from 1929 levels, and one in every four ...read more

For nearly 56 hours after the Apollo 13 mission launched on April 11, 1970, it looked to be the smoothest flight of NASA’s Apollo program so far. The spacecraft ferrying astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise to their planned lunar landing had traveled just over ...read more