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History / U.S. History

Rickwood Field is the oldest ballpark in the United States.

Everyone Should Know About Rickwood Field, the Alabama Park Where Baseball Legends Made History

The sport’s greatest figures played ball in the Deep South amid the racism and bigotry that would later make Birmingham the center of the civil rights movement

“When I was making it, people laughed at me a good deal,” Charles F. Ritchel later said. “But so they did at Noah when he built the ark.”

Untold Stories of American History

Twenty-Five Years Before the Wright Brothers Took to the Skies, This Flying Machine Captivated America

First exhibited in 1878, Charles F. Ritchel’s dirigible was about as wacky, dangerous and impractical as any airship ever launched

Louisiana Purchase State Park in Holly Grove, Arkansas, lies on the spot where the land surveys of the new territories originated.

How the United States Laid Claim to the Mississippi River, One Mile at a Time

Thomas Jefferson imagined the waterway as the heart of his “empire of liberty” as he dispatched surveyors to measure a land already occupied by Native Americans

War correspondent Martha Gellhorn (left) and her first husband, Ernest Hemingway, in 1940

Women Who Shaped History

Martha Gellhorn Was The Only Woman to Report on the D-Day Landings From the Ground

In June 1944, the veteran journalist hid on a hospital ship so she could report firsthand as Allied soldiers fought their way onto the beaches of Normandy

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There's More to That

How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than a Century Ago

A food history writer and an influential podcast host tell us how our thinking about health and body weight has—and hasn’t—evolved ever since Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters took the nation by storm

Calvin Coolidge poses with Native American leaders on the White House lawn in 1925.

A Century Ago, This Law Underscored the Promises and Pitfalls of Native American Citizenship

The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act sought to assimilate Native people into white society. But the legislation, signed by President Calvin Coolidge, fell short

The 1892 People's Grocery murders are “what opened my eyes to what lynching really was,” Ida B. Wells later wrote.

Women Who Shaped History

How the Murder of a Black Grocery Store Owner and His Colleagues Galvanized Ida B. Wells’ Anti-Lynching Crusade

The saga of People’s Grocery stands as a powerful reminder of the centrality of Black radicalism to the food justice movement

On May 21, 1924, Nathan Leopold Jr. (left) and Richard Loeb (right) murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Leopold later described the pair's motive as “a sort of pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different.”

Why Leopold and Loeb Committed Cold-Blooded Murder in the ‘Crime of the Century’

A century ago, two Chicago teenagers killed an acquaintance named Bobby Franks for the thrill of it. The case captivated the nation and continues to fascinate the public today

Looming large on Philadelphia’s Broad Street, a ten-foot-high statue—a gift to the city from the Pennsylvania Freemasons—shows young Benjamin Franklin at his printing press.

Benjamin Franklin Was the Nation’s First Newsman

Before he helped launch a revolution, Benjamin Franklin was colonial America’s leading editor and printer of novels, almanacs, soap wrappers, and everything in between

Jenn Colella as Carrie Chapman Catt (center) in Suffs, a new Broadway musical about the women's suffrage movement

Women Who Shaped History

What the Broadway Musical ‘Suffs’ Gets Right (and Wrong) About the History of Women’s Suffrage

The new show serves as an entertaining history lesson, but even that has its creative limits

The Old Lahaina Courthouse was destroyed in a wildfire on August 11, 2023.

University Students in Hawaii Use Cutting-Edge Technology to Digitally Restore Historic Buildings Damaged by Maui Wildfires

A new course at University of Hawaii at Manoa rethinks historic preservation, having enrollees design digital twins of notable structures so that people can experience them virtually

An 1890 portrait of Lizzie Borden

How Lizzie Borden Got Away With Murder

Class, nativism and gender stereotypes all played a role in Borden’s acquittal for the 1892 killings of her father and stepmother

Josefina "Joey" Guerrero (third from right) received the Medal of Honor With Silver Palm for her actions during World War II, which were “instrumental in saving the lives of many Americans and Filipinos,” according to the award citation.

Women Who Shaped History

This Filipina Spy Used Her Leprosy as a Cover to Thwart the Japanese During World War II

Enemy soldiers overlooked Josefina “Joey” Guerrero due to her condition. Later, her heroic actions on behalf of the Allies were largely forgotten

The law eventually caught up to the man of many names: Daniel Jackson Oliver Wendell Holmes Morgan.

The Fabulous Fabulist Lawyer Who Wasn’t, but Still Managed to Get a Man Off Death Row

Take in the remarkable tale of the fake attorney best known as L.A. Harris, whose scams put him in trouble with the law in jurisdictions nationwide

 Nikola Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs around 1899

Nikola Tesla and the Tower That Became His ‘Million Dollar Folly’

The eccentric inventor’s dream of a wireless-transmission tower would prove to be his undoing

Hazel Ying Lee (right) and fellow pilot Virginia Wong (left)

Women Who Shaped History

This Chinese American Aviatrix Overcame Racism to Fly for the U.S. During World War II

A second-generation immigrant, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to receive her pilot’s license

In 1866, Joseph A. Joel, a Jewish private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment, wrote a detailed account of an 1862 Passover Seder.

Untold Stories of American History

How Jewish Soldiers Celebrated Passover in the Midst of the Civil War

A group of Union men from Ohio held a makeshift Seder in the western Virginia woods in 1862

Michael Douglas stars as Benjamin Franklin in the Apple TV+ series "Franklin."

Based on a True Story

The Real Story Behind Apple TV+’s ‘Franklin’

A new limited series starring Michael Douglas as Benjamin Franklin revisits the founding father’s years as the American ambassador to France

USS South Dakota (BB-57) anchored in Hvalfjordur

This 12-Year-Old Boy Fought on a World War II Battleship and Became the Nation’s Youngest Decorated War Hero

In 1942, young Calvin Graham was decorated for valor in battle, before his worried mother learned of his whereabouts and revealed his secret to the Navy

The hideout boasted more than 1,000 bunk beds, a 400-seat cafeteria, individual auditoriums for both the Senate and the House of Representatives, vast water tanks, and a trash incinerator that could serve as a crematorium.

Untold Stories of American History

The Town That Kept Its Nuclear Bunker a Secret for Three Decades

The people of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, helped keep the Greenbrier resort’s bunker—designed to hold the entirety of Congress—hidden from 1958 to 1992

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