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Peter Zablocki

Peter Zablocki is a historian, author and host of the “History Shorts” podcast. For more information, visit peterzablocki.com.

An 1880 Harper's Weekly illustration titled Women at the Polls in New Jersey in the Good Old Times

How Women in New Jersey Gained—and Lost—the Right to Vote More Than a Century Before the 19th Amendment Granted Suffrage Nationwide

Vague phrasing in the state’s Revolutionary-era Constitution enfranchised women who met specific property requirements. A 1790 law explicitly allowed female suffrage, but this privilege was revoked in 1807

After a trolley conductor accused Alice Stebbins Wells of using her husband's police badge to avoid paying for public transit, the Los Angeles Police Department allowed her to wear a more feminine uniform of her own design, along with a special “Policewoman’s Badge No. 1.”

Armed With Just a Badge, Los Angeles’ First Policewoman Protected the City’s Most Vulnerable in the Early 20th Century

Appointed in 1910, Alice Stebbins Wells patrolled dance halls, skating rinks, penny arcades and movie theaters, keeping these public spaces free of vice and immorality

Herbert O. Yardley claimed that the Black Chamber deciphered more than 45,000 diplomatic code and cipher telegrams of foreign governments between 1917 and 1929.

The Spy Who Exposed the Secrets of the Black Chamber, One of America’s First Code-Breaking Organizations

In 1931, Herbert O. Yardley published a tell-all book about his experiences leading a covert government agency called the Cipher Bureau

By age 11, Theodore Roosevelt boasted that he had 1,000 scientific specimens in the collections of his Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.

How a Dead Seal Sparked Theodore Roosevelt’s Lifelong Passion for Conservation

As a child, the future president acquired a marine animal’s skull, which became the first specimen in his natural history collection

The 31-star Perry flag is visible in the background of this photo, which shows United States General Douglas MacArthur signing the official Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.

To Mark Japan’s Surrender at the End of World War II, This Navy Officer Raced Halfway Around the World With a Historic Flag in Tow

In August 1945, John K. Bremyer undertook a 124-hour, 9,000-mile journey to Tokyo Bay, where he delivered the flag flown by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 to Admiral William Halsey’s USS “Missouri”