For America’s GIs, returning home from World War II and integrating back into society wasn’t always easy. At a time when veterans were expected to quickly forget the war and the wider world they’d seen—and settle down into stable homes, families and jobs—motorcycles offered a ...read more

• Jul 22, 2021

In the colonial era, the most prestigious jobs were reserved for well-off white men, who secured appointments as colonial governors and military leaders. But there were many other types of jobs in Britain’s 13 American colonies. Benjamin Banneker, a free Black man born in ...read more

• Jul 21, 2021

When television flickered into America's living rooms in the years after World War II, it took less than a decade for it to overtake radio as the nation's dominant entertainment medium. Between 1948 and 1959, years now considered the “Golden Age of Television,” a mix of ...read more

• Jul 16, 2021

The most recent ice age peaked between 24,000 and 21,000 years ago, when vast ice sheets covered North America and northern Europe, and mountain ranges like Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro and South America's Andes were encased in glaciers. At that point our Homo sapien ancestors had ...read more

• Jul 15, 2021

When the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the ancient Egyptians' land was "given them by the river," he was referring to the Nile, whose waters were essential to the rise of one of the world’s earliest great civilizations. The Nile, which flows northward for 4,160 miles from ...read more

• Jul 12, 2021

Minutes after its take off from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a Boeing 747 headed for Paris exploded midair over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996, leaving all 230 people aboard dead. The four-year investigation into what caused the ...read more

• Jul 12, 2021

For thousands of years, humans have dreamed of taking to the skies. The quest has led from kite flying in ancient China to hydrogen-powered hot-air balloons in 18th-century France to contemporary aircraft so sophisticated they can’t be detected by radar or the human eye. Below ...read more

• Jul 9, 2021

The filibuster, a method of delaying or halting the progress of a bill through prolonged speeches, developed in both chambers of the U.S. Congress in the 19th century. The U.S. House of Representatives got rid of the filibuster at the end of that century. But in the Senate, the ...read more

• Jul 8, 2021

For 75 years, active-duty members of the British military have served as stewards at Wimbledon, the annual tennis “Championships” held at the storied All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club. Since 1946, uniformed men and women from the Army, Air Force and Navy have volunteered at ...read more

• Jul 7, 2021

In the words of Gussie Van Buren, one-half of the sister duo that first traversed America by motorcycle, “woman can if she will.” Here’s a look at some of the most inspiring women adventurers in history who flouted societal conventions, broke barriers and proved that women can ...read more

• Jul 7, 2021

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

• Jun 29, 2021

Even after armed hostilities broke out between the American colonists and British forces in 1775, many prominent colonists seemed reluctant to consider the idea of actually breaking away from Britain, and instead insisted that they were still its loyal subjects, even as they ...read more

• Jun 28, 2021