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

While scholars generally agree that Jesus was a real historical figure, debate has long raged around the events and circumstances of his life as depicted in the Bible. In particular, there’s been some confusion in the past about what language Jesus spoke, as a man living during ...read more

At the outset of 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt was entering his 12th year as president of the United States. The popular Democratic leader had steered his country through the Great Depression with his groundbreaking New Deal programs, and won an unprecedented third term by a ...read more

Cleopatra’s death appears to have played out as dramatically as the life she lived. After the Egyptian queen and her longtime lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, saw their combined forces decimated in the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., they retreated to an uncertain future in ...read more

What were postwar Americans planning to eat in the event of a nuclear attack? Hint: It wasn’t very appetizing. With Cold War tensions escalating in the 1950s, the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack cast a terrifying shadow over everyday American life. In schools, children learned ...read more

By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights under the law. But for an increasing number of African Americans, ...read more

Ever since Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden, snakes in Christian tradition have been associated with lies, evil and temptation. But in other cultures, as far-flung as ancient Greece and Egypt and indigenous North America, snakes symbolize fertility, rebirth, renewal and ...read more

In 1796, as he neared the end of his second term, President George Washington was 64 years old and suffering from ills both physical and political. Plagued by painful dentures and rheumatism, and facing increasing attacks from opponents of his policies, the former Revolutionary ...read more

More than 70 nations worldwide have seen a woman lead their governments in the modern era. Some have been elected, some appointed; some served for relatively brief terms, while others have left an enduring legacy behind them. These seven women are among the most formidable of ...read more

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the United States found itself in uncharted territory. With the Confederacy’s defeat, some 4 million enslaved Black men, women and children had been granted their freedom, an emancipation that would be formalized with passage of the ...read more

The results of the U.S. presidential election of 1876 were a mess. A Democratic candidate had emerged with the lead in the popular vote, but 19 electoral votes from four states were in dispute. In 1877, Congress convened to settle the election—and their solution proved to be the ...read more

As home to Project Blue Book, ground zero for government investigation of UFOs from 1951 to 1969, Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) outside Dayton, Ohio, ranks up there alongside Area 51 as a subject of enduring speculation. Many of the rumors surrounding ...read more

In 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Air Force and defense contractor Lockheed Martin chose an ultra-remote site in the Mojave Desert of southern Nevada, about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to begin testing and developing the newest, most advanced aircraft in the ...read more

When it comes to mythic American figures, George Washington leads the pack. Commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and the first president of the United States, Washington was revered as the “Father of the Nation,” and set up on a pedestal even ...read more

The decade began amid the chaotic wake of a global financial crisis, and ended with the impeachment of a U.S. president. The growing use of social media fueled mass protest movements, bringing millions of people together around the globe in pursuit of common objectives. Britain ...read more

In May 1942, things were going Japan’s way. Since their surprise attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor the previous December, the Japanese had struck Allied targets across the Pacific and Far East, seizing Burma (Myanmar), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and the Philippines, as ...read more

In May 1942, U.S. and Australian naval and air forces were facing off against the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of the Coral Sea in the South Pacific. But in a windowless basement at Pearl Harbor, a group of U.S. Navy codebreakers had intercepted Japanese radio messages ...read more

Both socialism and communism are essentially economic philosophies advocating public rather than private ownership, especially of the means of production, distribution and exchange of goods (i.e., making money) in a society. Both aim to fix the problems they see as created by a ...read more