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

As the only industrialized nation in the world with no federal policy mandating paid maternity leave, the United States has a long and complicated history of how employers have handled pregnancy in the workplace.  From mandating reduced hours for pregnant employees to waffling on ...read more

With blunt, serrated teeth and a bite powerful enough to crush the bones of its prey, Tyrannosaurus rex has earned a reputation as one of the largest and most terrifying predators of the dinosaur world. Scientists have estimated T. Rex had a maximum bite force of more than six ...read more

In the weeks following D-Day, German troops began retreating en masse, as Allied forces advanced across France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. By September 1944, however, the overstretched Allies were approaching formidable German defenses along the Siegfried Line, ...read more

In early 1908, after the death of his mother, 18-year-old Adolf Hitler left his provincial hometown of Linz and moved to Vienna, the glamorous capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Leaving behind his late father’s ambitions for him to become a civil servant, Hitler saw Vienna ...read more

In the frigid waters off King William’s Island, in northern Canada, the wreck of a ship belonging to British explorer Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to find the Northwest Passage, has been preserved nearly intact for more than 170 years. The HMS Terror, one of two ...read more

Today many Americans see Labor Day as time off from work, an opportunity to enjoy a barbecue with friends and family and a final moment of summertime relaxation before the busy fall season begins. But the history behind the Labor Day holiday is far more complex and dramatic than ...read more

Ever since a British forest guide first stumbled on Roopkund Lake in northern India in 1942, experts have struggled to understand how hundreds of human skeletons ended up in this small, shallow glacial lake, which sits in a valley more than 16,000 feet above sea level. Over the ...read more

Shortly after midnight on September 18, 1961, a chartered DC-6 airplane carrying United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold on a peacekeeping mission to the newly independent African nation of the Congo crashed in a forest near Ndola, in the British protectorate of ...read more

Archaeologists in the Orkney Islands, off the northeastern coast of Scotland, have uncovered the ruins of what they think is a Viking drinking hall used by elite warriors, possibly including a powerful 12th-century chieftain named Sigurd. Orkney’s link to the Vikings can clearly ...read more

On the morning of November 11, 1620, when the Mayflower dropped its anchor off the coast of Cape Cod, the group of English Separatists later known as the Pilgrims fell to their knees and blessed God for bringing them safely across the “vast and furious ocean” to a new life in the ...read more

Humans weren’t the first to make or use stone tools. That honor appears to belong to the ancient species that lived on the shores of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, some 3.3 million years ago. First discovered in 2011, these more primitive tools were created some 700,000 years before the ...read more

As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, Americans woke up to a new kind of breakfast. Poured from a box into a bowl and doused with milk, cold cereals like Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes, Grape-Nuts and Shredded Wheat were not only lighter and easier to digest than more ...read more

Though the two main sects within Islam, Sunni and Shia, agree on most of the fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam, a bitter split between the two goes back some 14 centuries. The divide originated with a dispute over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the ...read more

Few monuments in the world are more recognizable than the Parthenon. Sitting atop a limestone hill rising some 500 feet above the Ilissos Valley in Athens, this soaring marble temple built in tribute to the goddess Athena brings the glory of ancient Greece into the modern world. ...read more

Archaeologists digging near the Swedish village of Gamla Uppsala have unearthed two rare boat burials from the Viking Age. Inside one of them, which was found intact, were the remains of a man, a horse and a dog, as well as several weapons and a comb. Though boat burials date ...read more

It’s hard to imagine Independence Day without fireworks. But how did this tradition get started? As it turns out, setting off mini-explosions of all shapes and colors (but particularly red, white and blue) on July 4 goes back almost as far as American independence itself. ...read more

In the first days of July 1863, two great armies converged at the small town of Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania. Begun as a skirmish between Union cavalry and Confederate infantry scouting for supplies, the battle escalated into one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. ...read more