Special Report

Untold Stories of American History

Explore the lives of little-known changemakers who left their mark on the country

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Illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The American Yawp Vol. II: Since 1877, Getty Images

In 1964, when a journalist asked Howard crew coach Stuart Law about the team’s last-place finishes, he just smiled and said, “We’re getting better all the time.”

The Barrier-Breaking Rowers of America's First All-Black Crew Team

By March 1862, Judith Henry's Virginia home had been reduced to rubble.

The Civil War's First Civilian Casualty Was an Elderly Widow From Virginia

In a 1929 column, Amelia Earhart name-checked Keating as an example of a woman in aviation who had beaten the odds, writing, "She photographs from the air and helps make the beautifully accurate maps which compose aerial surveys."

In 1920s New York, This Woman Typist Became a Pioneering Aerial Photographer

The men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops created elaborate illusions featuring inflatable tanks, jeeps and artillery.

How the Ghost Army of WWII Used Art to Deceive the Nazis

Members of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps pose on Minerva Terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park in 1896.

The Black Buffalo Soldiers Who Biked Across the American West

<p>A wooden trestle bridge near Terrace, Utah. The state has more intact miles of original railroad grade than any other in the West.</p>

The Chinese Immigrants Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

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By March 1862, Judith Henry's Virginia home had been reduced to rubble.

The Civil War's First Civilian Casualty Was an Elderly Widow From Virginia

Kellie B. Gormly

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The Southbound Underground Railroad Brought Thousands of Enslaved Americans to Mexico

By Richard Grant
Photographs by Scott Dalton

At a time of widespread public health crises and evolving ideas about how illnesses spread, kissing was an easily avoidable vector of disease. Unfortunately for Imogene Rechtin, most people proved unwilling to give it up.

The Woman Who Fought to End the 'Pernicious' Scourge of Kissing

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Escape From the Gilded Cage

The first two panels of "Nazi Death Parade," a six-panel comic depicting the mass murder of Jews at a Nazi concentration camp

The Holocaust-Era Comic That Brought Americans Into the Nazi Gas Chambers

Esther Bergdahl

Michelle Browder's Mothers of Gynecology monument in Montgomery

Subjected to Painful Experiments and Forgotten, Enslaved 'Mothers of Gynecology' Are Honored With New Monument

On March 15, the Senate unanimously passed legislation calling for year-round daylight saving time.

What Happened the Last Time the U.S. Tried to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent?

L to R: Ward Lee, Tucker Henderson and Romeo were three of the nearly 500 captives illegally transported on the Wanderer.

This Yacht Trafficked Enslaved Africans Long After the Slave Trade Was Abolished