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When Harry Truman Pushed for Universal Health Care
When Harry S. Truman enlisted in the army in World War I, he was struck by the number of men deemed unfit for service due to poor health. “He felt it was a reflection of inadequate health care for parts of the population,” says Randy Sowell, an archivist at the Harry S. Truman ...read more
Filipino Americans Fought With U.S. in WWII, Then Had to Fight for Veterans Benefits
On an early December morning in 1941, waves of Japanese bombers roared through American airspace. While air sirens wailed and guns blazed, American nationals took cover as a surprise attack in the Pacific sank U.S. battleships and crippled the largest aggregation of American ...read more
5 Things You Might Not Know About the Battle of Midway
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
All the Ways People Escaped Across the Berlin Wall
Ida Siekmann had been holed up for days. Nine days earlier, workers had sealed the border to her country by dead of night. Three days earlier, the front entrance to her apartment had been blocked off by police. She had committed no crime, but Siekmann was in the wrong place at ...read more
15 Quotes Honoring U.S. Veterans
Since its founding in 1776, the United States has fought in about a dozen major wars—and intervened militarily on hundreds of others—with every generation of Americans witnessing combat in one form or another. As such, tens of millions of Americans have suited up for the armed ...read more
How Native Americans Struggled to Survive on the Trail of Tears
In the early 1800s, the sovereign Cherokee nation covered a vast region that included northwest Georgia and adjacent land in Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama. Under the terms of an 1819 treaty, the United States guaranteed that Cherokee land would be off-limits to white ...read more
How Codebreakers Helped Secure U.S. Victory in the Battle of Midway
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
Bugs of War: How Insects Have Been Weaponized Throughout History
Beehive catapults. Scorpion bombs. Bug pit prisons. For thousands of years, military strategists have used insects as weapons of war—not only to inflict debilitating pain on enemies, but also to deliver deadly pathogens and destroy agriculture, with the intent of causing ...read more
The Ruthless 16th-Century Spy Network That Kept Queen Elizabeth Safe
In late 16th-century England, Queen Elizabeth was a Protestant royal who faced perpetual threats to her life and reign. Real enemies and exaggerated fears led to paranoia—and the royal court responded with a secret war. In what would become England’s first great brush with ...read more
The Torturous History of Trying to Measure Pain
How have medical professionals measured pain throughout history? Not very well, it turns out. In one famous test in the late 1940s, two American male researchers performed pain experiments on pregnant women in labor. Whenever a woman had a contraction, they burned her hand with ...read more
When Native Americans Briefly Won Back Their Land
They came from near and far: Native American chiefs and representatives of various tribes bearing gifts for a historic meeting. Their destination was Fort Niagara in New York, where dozens of Nations would meet to negotiate a new alliance with the British. Months earlier, in ...read more
After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
They called her “Moses” for leading enslaved people in the South to freedom up North. But Harriet Tubman fought the institution of slavery well beyond her role as a conductor for the Underground Railroad. As a soldier and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War, Tubman became ...read more
6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Despite the horrors of slavery, it was no easy decision to flee. Escaping often involved leaving behind family and heading into the complete unknown, where harsh weather and lack of food might await. Then there was the constant threat of capture. So-called slave catchers and ...read more
8 Creepy Halloween Tales & Traditions
On Halloween, people shed reality for a day and mark the holiday with costumes, decorations and parties. Creepy legends and characters have evolved based on real, terrifying events. And a Halloween tradition of confronting the dead has led to legions of ghost stories—and hoaxes. ...read more
How Versailles' Over-the-Top Opulence Drove the French to Revolt
In the early morning of October 6, 1789, hundreds of starving, defiant women and men (some disguised as women) from Paris stormed the palace of Versailles, the legendarily extravagant seat of government in France. They tore through the gilded halls, beating and beheading palace ...read more