On this day in 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. Over the course of 24 hours, the ...read more

King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, is captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile. Cetshwayo’s defiance of British rule in southern Africa led to Britain’s invasion of Zululand in 1879. In 1843, Britain ...read more

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the African American civil rights movement reaches its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators–black and white, ...read more

On this day in 1941, more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews are murdered by the Gestapo in occupied Ukraine. The German invasion of the Soviet Union had advanced to the point of mass air raids on Moscow and the occupation of parts of Ukraine. On August 26, Hitler displayed the joys of ...read more

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson is picketed by woman suffragists in front of the White House, who demand that he support an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee women the right to vote. Wilson had a history of lukewarm support for women’s suffrage, ...read more

Convinced they will have a better chance surviving the desert than the raging rapids that lay ahead, three men leave John Wesley Powell’s expedition through the Grand Canyon and scale the cliffs to the plateau above. Though it turned out the men had made a serious mistake, they ...read more

If the legendary gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson had been somewhere other than the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1963, her place in history would still have been assured purely on the basis of her musical legacy. But it is almost impossible to imagine Mahalia ...read more

An air show involving military jets at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany turns tragic on this day in 1988 when three jets collide in mid-air and fall into the crowd. Sixty-nine of the 100,000 spectators died and hundreds more were injured. Toward the end of the NATO-sponsored show ...read more

The bodies of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada are discovered at the Gatorwood Apartments, near the campus of the University of Florida. Their murders came two days after the discovery that three young female students had been killed and mutilated in two separate locations near ...read more

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of protesters against the Vietnam War battle police in the streets while the Democratic Party tears itself to shreds concerning a platform statement on Vietnam. In one day and night, the Cold War consensus that ...read more

On this day in 1774, Elizabeth Ann Bayley is born in New York City. She went on to found the first Catholic school and the first female apostolic community in the United States. She was also the first American-born saint beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. Elizabeth Ann ...read more