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History / U.S. History

Abraham Lincoln’s third annual message to Congress spurred prompt and consequential action on what became the first piece of proactive federal legislation to encourage, rather than discourage, immigration to the U.S.

Abraham Lincoln’s Oft-Overlooked Campaign to Promote Immigration to the U.S.

A few weeks after the president delivered the Gettysburg Address, he called on Congress to welcome immigrants as a “source of national wealth and strength”

A late-19th-century photograph of John Mason's mansion on Analostan Island, now called Theodore Roosevelt Island

Untold Stories of American History

This Peaceful Nature Sanctuary in Washington, D.C. Sits on the Ruins of a Plantation

Before Theodore Roosevelt Island was transformed into a tribute to the nation’s “conservation president,” a prominent Virginia family relied on enslaved laborers to build and tend to its summer home there

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There's More to That

Oppenheimer Has a Long History On Screen, Including the Time the Nuclear Physicist Played Himself

Now with 13 Academy Award nominations to its credit, the blockbuster film comes after nearly eight decades of mythologizing the father of the atomic bomb

Callum Turner (left) as John "Bucky" Egan and Austin Butler (right) as Gale "Buck" Cleven in "Masters of the Air"

Based on a True Story

The Real History Behind ‘Masters of the Air’ and the 100th Bomb Group

The long-awaited follow-up to “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” centers on an American aerial group nicknamed the “Bloody Hundredth”

The original Macintosh computer may seem quaint today, but the way users interacted with it was game-changing.

Forty Years Ago, the Mac Triggered a Revolution in User Experience

When it was introduced in 1984, Apple’s Macintosh didn’t have any striking technological breakthroughs, but it did make it easier for people to operate a computer

Verdun, Félix Edouard Vallotton, 1917

History of Now

As Empires Clashed During World War I, a Global Media Industry Brought the Conflict’s Horrors to the Public

An exhibition at LACMA traces the roots of modern media to the Great War, when propaganda mobilized the masses, and questions whether the brutal truths of the battlefield can ever really be communicated

A Tuskegee study subject gets his blood drawn in the mid-20th century.

What Newly Digitized Records Reveal About the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The archival trove chronicles the extreme measures administrators took to ensure Black sharecroppers did not receive treatment for the venereal disease

James W. Barr and Claudia E. Sharperson Barr (above, left and right), the maternal grandparents of senior editor Tracy Scott Forson. Diana Anagho (center), mother of heritage travel organizer Ada Anagho Brown. Brown as a child (far right). Harriet Tubman (below, left). Lewis Douglass (bottom), son of abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass.

Tracing a Lost Ancestry

What Genealogical Records Taught Me About My Family

For millions of enslaved people, bondage stole more than freedom—it severed a link to the past. Now their descendants are recovering their heritage

Left, Bartram’s illustration of Annona grandiflora, a member of the pawpaw family, which appeared in the naturalist’s 1791 Travels, right.

More Than 200 Years After He Toured Florida, America’s First Great Environmentalist Is Inspiring Locals to Reconnect With Nature

A new generation is discovering the rambling Southern route of William Bartram and his legendary 1791 travelogue

Sunlight illuminates a plaque in Charleston, South Carolina, honoring 36 likely enslaved people—ranging in age from 3 to over 50—whose remains were discovered in 2013.

Tracing a Lost Ancestry

A New Project Uses Isotopes to Pinpoint the Birthplaces of the Enslaved

In South Carolina, members of the local Black community are teaming up with scientists to produce a novel study of the trans-Atlantic slave trade

Charles Robert Jenkins, pictured here in 2004, hoped to surrender to North Korea, then seek aslyum at the Soviet Embassy and eventually make his way back to the United States via a prisoner swap.

History of Now

The American Soldier Whose Fear of Fighting in Vietnam Led Him to Defect to North Korea. He Stayed There for 40 Years

During his time in the repressive country, Charles Robert Jenkins married a Japanese abductee, taught English at a school and appeared in propaganda films

The fateful tent on display at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.

From These Modest Wartime Quarters, George Washington Kept the Revolution Alive

The general’s war tent, an iconic part of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, carries as much symbolism now as it did then

Participants on a bus tour at the 2014 community pilgrimage to Tule Lake

Why the Language We Use to Describe Japanese American Incarceration During World War II Matters

A descendant of concentration camp survivors argues that using the right vocabulary can help clarify the stakes when confronting wartime trauma

Fascinating finds unveiled in 2023 ranged from a 12-sided object that may have been used for sorcery to a lost Rembrandt portrait.

Cool Finds

117 Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2023

The year’s most exciting discoveries included a stolen Vincent van Gogh painting, a hidden medieval crypt and a gold-covered mummy

A pneumatic mail tube at the main Post Office Department branch in New York City, circa 1914 or 1915

When a Labyrinth of Pneumatic Tubes Shuttled Mail Beneath the Streets of New York City

Powered by compressed air, the system transported millions of letters between 1897 and 1953

Between Christmas Day in 1941 and April 1, 1946, North Platte Canteen volunteers met as many as 24 trains carrying 3,000 to 5,000 military personnel every day.

Untold Stories of American History

How the Women of the North Platte Canteen Fed Six Million Soldiers During World War II

Volunteers based out of a Nebraska train station offered American troops encouragement and free food, including birthday cakes and popcorn balls

“There’s something about these characters,” says department store historian Michael Lisicky. “So many of [them] are so wonderfully regional, and that’s why they’re still so powerful.” Featured characters include Uncle Mistletoe, Billie the Brownie, Christopher Candycane and Mr. Bingle.

Meet a Dozen Lesser-Known Christmas Characters, From Mr. Jingeling to Uncle Mistletoe

Created as department store marketing tools, many of these seasonal figures became beloved holiday traditions

The Bostonians’ “preferred outcome” was for the tea to be “peacefully sent back to London,” says historian Benjamin L. Carp. “It’s only when they find out … the governor is not going to let [that happen] that they say, ‘Well, we have no choice [but] to destroy [the tea].”

The Many Myths of the Boston Tea Party

Contrary to popular belief, the 1773 protest opposed a tax break, not a tax hike. And it didn’t immediately unify the colonies against the British

Nine-year-old Neikoye Flowers (foreground), photographed in 2023 wearing in a Civil War uniform like the one worn by his ancestor, David Miles Moore, Jr. (background),160 years ago.

There's More to That

When Your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Is a Civil War Hero

Can recreating photographs from the 19th century connect a family to its lost heritage?

Jared Miller poses as his ancestor Richard Oliver, a soldier in the 20th Colored Infantry, at Penumbra Tintype Portrait Studio in New York City.

Descendants of Black Civil War Heroes Wear Their Heritage With Pride

A bold new photographic project asks modern-day Americans to recreate portraits of their 19th-century ancestors in painstakingly accurate fashion

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