Christopher Klein

In a quest to fulfill a centuries-old dream to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the builders of the Panama Canal quickly learned that the construction of a waterway across a narrow ribbon of land looked easier on a map than in reality. The Panamanian isthmus proved to be ...read more

Babe Ruth’s called shot in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series remains one of the most famous home runs in baseball history. What’s much less known, however, is that Ruth’s blast would likely never have occurred except for a remarkable chain of events that started with three ...read more

The World Series has been a stage for some of Major League Baseball's greatest plays as well as its most ignominious moments. From dropped balls to a blown umpire call, here are 10 of the Fall Classic’s most noteworthy blunders. 1. New York Giants' Fred Snodgrass, Game 8, 1912 ...read more

Aviation accidents are so rare that they naturally make front-page news. Some plane crashes, however, have left lasting imprints due to their unique circumstances or indelible images. Although not the deadliest in American history, these seven plane crashes are among the most ...read more

The first baseball player from Latin America to collect 3,000 hits, Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente won four batting crowns, 12 Gold Glove Awards and the 1966 National League Most Valuable Player Award during his iconic career. A 15-time All-Star, the Puerto Rico native led the ...read more

The World Series has produced many moments of incredible drama, but only in 1960 has the Fall Classic ended with a Game 7 home run. That World Series was among the wildest in baseball history as the New York Yankees outscored the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55-27, and second baseman ...read more

Before gaining his greatest fame with the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth was a star with the rival Boston Red Sox. As an ace pitcher and slugging outfielder, Ruth helped Boston win three World Series titles in his first six seasons with the team. Then, after the 1919 season, Red Sox ...read more

For thousands of years, mankind has engineered remarkable structures such as the pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China. More recently, visionary engineers have undertaken massive transportation and communications projects that have pushed the boundaries of human ...read more

Frosty temperatures are typical for National Football League playoff games, but never have football fans and players shivered as much as they did on January 10, 1982, when the Cincinnati Bengals hosted the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship Game. With a kickoff ...read more

The accomplishments of Muhammad Ali are renowned: Olympic gold medalist, heavyweight boxing champion, humanitarian, civil rights activist. But would you believe he also was a Grammy Award nominee in 1964 and 1976?   Trading in his boxing gloves and shorts for black tie and tails, ...read more

Except for one fairytale season in 1969, when they won the World Series, the New York Mets were largely synonymous with futility for the first quarter-century of their existence. The Mets languished in the shadows of their pinstriped neighbors in the Bronx—the New York ...read more

For two years after the American Revolution erupted in the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord, the war unfolded primarily on northern battlefields. Following a pivotal defeat at the 1777 Battle of Saratoga and the French entry to the American side the following year, ...read more

By the time Julius Caesar stepped in front of the Roman Senate on the Ides of March in 44 B.C., the nearly 500-year-old Roman Republic had been ailing for years. Wealth inequality, political gridlock and civil wars had all weakened the republic in the century prior to Caesar’s ...read more

After decades of political dysfunction, civil wars and assassinations that caused the Roman Republic’s downfall, Ancient Rome flourished during two centuries of relative tranquility and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (Latin for “Roman Peace”). Ushered in by the ascension of ...read more

Although bridges are among history’s greatest feats of engineering—andin rare cases they have unexpectedly and catastrophically failed due to structural deficiencies, weather conditions or too much weight. These seven collapses are among history’s deadliest bridge disasters. ...read more

The history of anti-war protests in the United States is as old as the country itself. Every war in American history—even the one that spawned the country—generated internal dissent from pacifists who rejected all wars and from citizens who objected to specific military conflicts ...read more

When the Great Depression hit its lowest ebb in 1933, the unemployment rate exceeded 20 percent and America’s gross domestic product had plummeted by 30 percent. Not everyone, however, lost money during the worst economic downturn in American history. Business titans such as ...read more

The U.S. aviation industry took off in the early 20th century not by transporting people, but by moving America’s mail. At first, airmail pilots flew in flimsy open-cockpit planes through every kind of weather—an experience that ranged from frequently harrowing to sometimes ...read more

It’s common wisdom that William Henry Harrison delivered one killer of a speech after being sworn in as the ninth president of the United States—and it had nothing to do with anything he said.  Ignoring the advice of vigilant mothers everywhere, “Old Tippecanoe” swore off his ...read more

As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence service recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman—Josephine Baker. Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect information on Nazi ...read more

Why were the 1920s such a tough time for America’s labor unions? Call it a backlash against their growing strength. After expanding power during the Progressive Era in the first two decades of the 20th century, organized labor strengthened further during World War I. The U.S. ...read more

Propelled by a Second Industrial Revolution, the United States arose from the ashes of the Civil War to become one of the world’s leading economic powers by the turn of the 20th century. Corporate titans such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan amassed ...read more

Mankind’s love affair with chocolate stretches back more than five millennia. Produced from the seeds of tropical cacao trees native to the rainforests of Central and South America, chocolate was long considered the “food of the gods,” and later, a delicacy for the elite. But for ...read more

As security fears gripped its capital and a global calamity continued to claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, the United States prepared for a presidential inauguration unlike any in its history. With U.S. participation in World War II entering in its fourth ...read more

When the Pilgrims set sail from Europe in 1620, several powerful reasons propelled them across the Atlantic Ocean to make new lives in America—but religious liberty was not their most pressing concern. While it’s popularly thought that the Pilgrims fled England in search of ...read more

As part of an illustrious family of stage actors, John Wilkes Booth was already a familiar figure to many Americans before he entered the presidential box of Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. The Booth name had been emblazoned on playbills of American theaters for decades before ...read more

When it came to waging war at sea during the American Revolution, the mighty British Navy had a vast advantage over its small and inexperienced colonial counterpart. But while the Continental fleet had little impact on the outcome of the war, tens of thousands of citizen sailors ...read more

After Private David Lewis collapsed and died during a basic training exercise at New Jersey’s Fort Dix on February 4, 1976, an investigation into the 19-year-old’s premature death identified a long-dormant, but notorious killer as the cause. Blood tests conducted at the Center ...read more

Each year an average of two hurricanes strike the United States, leaving death and destruction in their wakes. According to Eric Jay Dolin, author of A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes, these powerful storms have caused billions of dollars of ...read more

World War II ended six years and one day after Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, sparked the 20th century’s second global conflict. By the time it concluded on the deck of an American warship on September 2, 1945, World War II had claimed the lives of an ...read more

Theodore Roosevelt, known for his boundless energy and brash, adventurous spirit, possessed one of the biggest personalities of any American president. But, he once said, “It is a quality of strong natures that their failings, like their virtues, should stand out in bold relief.” ...read more

Nearly 150 years before the advent of texts, tweets and e-mail, President Abraham Lincoln became the first “wired president” by embracing the original electronic messaging technology—the telegraph. The 16th president may be remembered for his soaring oratory that stirred the ...read more

Alexander Hamilton abhorred slavery and at a few points in his life worked to help limit it. But any moral objections he held were tempered by his social and political ambitions. Throughout his life, like so many leaders of the time, he allowed or used slavery to advance his ...read more

By February 1945, it was increasingly clear that not only would Adolf Hitler's Third Reich fail to last a millennium as he had hoped; it wouldn’t even survive the spring. With the end of World War II finally in sight, the “Big Three” Allied leaders—U.S. President Franklin D. ...read more

It was the ultimate social-distancing experiment. On September 26, 1991, four men and four women in dark-blue spacesuits waved goodbye to friends, families and a bank of television cameras as they stepped through an airtight door to embark on an unprecedented mission. In spite of ...read more

Shortly before noon on May 6, 1884, Ulysses S. Grant entered the office of his Wall Street brokerage firm a wealthy man. Hours later, he exited a pauper. Thanks to a pyramid scheme operated by his unscrupulous partner, Ferdinand Ward, Grant’s investment firm had instantly ...read more

President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant didn’t meet often in person. But their mutual respect and trust grew deep over the final year of the Civil War as they together steered America and its armies through the most convulsive period in the nation’s history. In his ...read more

Richard Nixon couldn’t sleep. Four days after the Kent State shootings, the president sat in the sitting room off the Lincoln Bedroom listening to a Rachmaninoff concerto on his record player. With dawn still two hours away, Nixon gazed into the darkness where protestors were ...read more

Through war and peace, American hospital ships have served the country since 1804 and the First Barbary War. Although these floating hospitals embark on missions of mercy, they have also become casualties of war. During World War II, two dozen hospital ships were sunk by enemy ...read more

The dulcet tones of “White Christmas” that crackled over Armed Forces Radio airwaves on April 29, 1975, failed to spread cheer across sunbaked Saigon. Instead, the broadcast of the holiday standard after the announcement that “the temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising” ...read more

Cholera tore through New York City in the summer of 1832, leaving its victims with sunken eyes, blue skin, severe diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. It had swept from its origin in Asia and then made its way across Europe before arriving at New York’s shores. It only took a matter of ...read more

Lashed by a squall of historical events over four harrowing years, exhausted Americans longed to catch their collective breath as Election Day approached. The four years leading up to the presidential election of 1920 had delivered a ghastly confluence of war, pestilence, ...read more

The blood remained fresh on the snow outside Boston’s Custom House on the morning of March 6, 1770. Hours earlier, rising tensions between British troops and colonists had exploded into violence when a band of Redcoats opened fire on a crowd that had pelted them with not just ...read more

As a terrifyingly lethal influenza virus swept across the globe between 1918 and 1920, history’s deadliest pandemic claimed the lives of approximately 50 million people worldwide and 675,000 in the United States. Nearly 200,000 Americans died from the “Spanish Flu” in October ...read more

Shortly after noon on August 26, 1961, Hollis Watkins and Curtis Elmer Hayes filled two vacant stools at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in McComb, Mississippi. When the two African American students were refused service at the segregated dining spot, police arrested the pair for ...read more

As the United States grew into the world’s leading industrial power during the late 19th century, those atop the economic ladder in America’s Gilded Age accumulated spectacular fortunes. By 1890, the country’s 4,000 millionaires held 20 percent of the country’s wealth, and with ...read more

If a Mount Rushmore for America’s most unpopular presidents is ever created, John Tyler would be a leading candidate to have his likeness carved into stone. “Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude ...read more

Eulogized by Henry Lee as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” George Washington stood preeminent among the pantheon of American Founding Fathers. At his home Mount Vernon, on the battlefield and in the presidency, Washington crossed paths ...read more