American History

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Bearing Witness to the Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing

On September 15, 1963, four were killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama

Shoes worn by Maria Cecilia Benavente on September 11, 2001

Remembering 9/11: Maria Cecilia Benavente's Sandals

Maria Cecilia Benavente escaped Tower Two barefoot; in shock, she held onto her sandals

William Jay Gaynor

An Assassin’s Bullet Took Three Years to Kill NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor

Gaynor collapsed and died from a bullet that had been lodged in his throat for three years - put there by an eventually successful assassin

Nobody Knows How to Interpret This Doomsday Stonehenge in Georgia

We know where they are and what they say, but everything else is all hotly debated

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A 1928 Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary May Be the First Official Record of “Meh”

The term “meh,” defined as “an expression of indifference or boredom,” entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2008

Obama Isn’t the First Peace Prize Laureate to Support a War

This isn't the first time a Peace Prize winner has pushed for war

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This 1970s Underground Bomb Shelter Is Impeccably Designed And For Sale

3970 Spencer St seems pretty normal, until you look more closely that you realize that the trees in the background are fake, and the sky is painted on

A woman operates an early decryption machine for the NSA’s progenitor

How the NSA Stopped Trying to Prevent the Spread of Encryption And Decided to Just Break It Instead

The NSA spent decades trying to stop the spread of encryption technology

“Jews praying on Jewish New Year”

See How New Yorkers Celebrated Rosh Hashanah a Century Ago

Photographs from the early 1900s show Rosh Hashanah in New York

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Cow Tipping Never Was And Never Will Be a Thing People Actually Do

Scientists have actually taken the time to investigate the idea, and produced some hard numbers that indicated that cow-tipping "has no leg to stand on"

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A Reminder From Yosemite’s Massive 1988 Fire: Wildfire Is Largely a Human Problem

This isn't the first time fire has threatened a national park

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Why the Smithsonian Just Can’t Quit Studying the Civil War

150 years later, the war is still in focus

What Isaac Asimov Thought 2014 Would Look Like

Past predictions about the future oftentimes fail miserably, but many of Isaac Asimov's futuristic visions were pretty accurate

Strikes began in July in New York, and have now spread to the South.

Why It’s a Big Deal That Fast Food Strikes Have Spread to the South

Fast food workers are asking for more money and to unionize, something that's unusual to see in the South

Saving the Last of the Great Carousels

The ornate, well made carousels of the past are in danger - degrading, being sold piecemeal and sometimes even for parts

Boston Children’s Hospital Once Relied on the Opera to Power X-Rays

In the 1880's the Children's Hospital in Boston didn't have electricity, so it couldn't use X-rays. But the nearby Opera House did

Photo courtesy of David Rumsey Map Collection. Interactive by Esri. Text by Natasha Geiling.

This Interactive Map Compares the New York City of 1836 to Today

Manhattan had a very different topography than the concrete jungle we know today

Photo courtesy of David Rumsey Map Collection. Interactive by Esri. Text by Natasha Geiling.

When the Lincoln Memorial Was Underwater

James Keily’s 1851 map of Washington shows a considerably smaller district, before the Potomac River was filled in to make way for monuments

The symbol for chemical weapons

The U.S. Knew Iraq Was Using Chemical Weapons, Helped Out Anyway

Recently declassified documents detail the CIA's knowledge of Iraq's chemical weapon program in the 1980s

Muriel Siebert, First Woman With a Seat on the Stock Exchange, Dies at Age 80

Siebert bought her seat in 1967, but she remained the only woman on the exchange for almost 10 years after that

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