The first settlers at the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia hoped to forge new lives away from England―but life in the early 1600s at Jamestown consisted mainly of danger, hardship, disease and death. All of the early settlers in 1607 were men and boys, including ...read more
Prior to World War II, women were mostly homemakers. Those that worked outside the home usually worked as secretaries, receptionists or department store clerks. Once America entered World War II, however, men went off to war by the millions and women stepped into the civilian and ...read more
On the night of March 5, 1770, the streets of Boston, Massachusetts were coated with snow and tension was thick between angry colonists and the British soldiers who occupied their town. As British Private Hugh White stood guard near the Custom House on King Street around 8 ...read more
The civil rights movement was a fight for equal rights under the law for African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s. Centuries of prejudice and discrimination fueled the crusade, but World War II and its aftermath were arguably the main catalysts. A. Philip Randolph’s crusade ...read more
Former FBI deputy director William Mark Felt, Sr., age 91, broke his 30-year silence and confirmed in June 2005 that he was “Deep Throat,” the anonymous government source who had leaked crucial information to Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which helped ...read more
During the 1930s, America went through one of its greatest challenges: the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to relieve the dire economic situation with his New Deal programs. To justify the need for those projects, the government employed photographers ...read more
On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British-owned luxury steamship Lusitania, killing 1,195 people including 128 Americans, according to the Library of Congress. The disaster immediately strained relations between Germany and the neutral United States, fueled ...read more
The causes of World War I, also known as the Great War, have been debated since it ended. Officially, Germany shouldered much of the blame for the conflict, which caused four years of unprecedented slaughter. But a series of complicated factors caused the war, including a brutal ...read more
Under skies darkened by smoke, gunfire and flying arrows, 210 men of the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Unit led by Lt. Colonel George Custer confronted thousands of fierce Sioux and Cheyenne warriors on June 25, 1876, near the Little Big Horn River in present-day Montana. The ...read more