American History Tellers

Wed, 04 Dec 2024

In January 1869, leaders of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met in Washington, D.C. to discuss...

Wed, 27 Nov 2024

In early 1866, Central Pacific workers were stalled in California, facing the monumental task of bla...

Tue, 26 Nov 2024

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, are hidden stories and buried ...

Wed, 20 Nov 2024

In the summer of 1863, an unscrupulous businessman named Thomas Durant gained control of the Union P...

Mon, 18 Nov 2024

November 18, 1928. Mickey Mouse makes his big screen debut in Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie.You c...

Wed, 13 Nov 2024

In October 1860, railroad engineer Theodore Judah looked out across California’s Sierra Nevada ran...

Tue, 12 Nov 2024

The true crime history podcast American Criminal takes you inside the minds of our most no...

Wed, 06 Nov 2024

Many people are familiar with Powhatan, the Paramount Chief who ruled over a vast network of more th...

Wed, 30 Oct 2024

In April 1613, years of bloody warfare culminated in the kidnapping of the paramount chief Powhatan’...

Wed, 23 Oct 2024

In the summer of 1609, a hurricane struck a large English fleet bound for Virginia on a rescue missi...

Wed, 16 Oct 2024

In January 1608, fire blazed through the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. Nearly every bui...

Mon, 14 Oct 2024

October 14, 1947. US Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the ...

Wed, 09 Oct 2024

In December 1606, three ships carrying 104 settlers left England and set sail for Virginia’s Chesa...

Wed, 02 Oct 2024

After the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, the ocean liner's fame only continued to grow. Today, Lindsay is...

Mon, 30 Sep 2024

September 30, 1520. Suleiman the Magnificent becomes Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and sets his sigh...

Wed, 25 Sep 2024

On April 16, 1912, shocked survivors of the Titanic made their way to New York aboard the rescue shi...

Wed, 18 Sep 2024

Just past midnight on April 15th, 1912, only 20 minutes after striking an iceberg, the Titanic began...

Mon, 16 Sep 2024

September 16, 1920. A horse-drawn wagon explodes in the middle of New York’s financial district, k...

Wed, 11 Sep 2024

When the RMS Titanic launched in April of 1912, it was the pinnacle of luxury and the largest vessel...

Wed, 04 Sep 2024

In 1981, a gunman fired six shots at Ronald Reagan after the president gave a speech at a Washington...

Mon, 02 Sep 2024

September 2nd 1666: the Great Fire of London begins in a bakery on Pudding Lane, before quickly spre...

Wed, 28 Aug 2024

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his presidential limo thro...

Wed, 21 Aug 2024

In September 1901, President William McKinley visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New Yo...

Mon, 19 Aug 2024

Description: August 19, 1991. A group of Communist Party hardliners attempt to save the collapsing S...

Wed, 14 Aug 2024

On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washing...

Wed, 07 Aug 2024

The job of guarding the President’s life belongs to the men and women of the United States Secret ...

Mon, 05 Aug 2024

August 5, 1969. Police in Atlanta, Georgia raid a screening of Andy Warhol’s underground film Lone...

Wed, 31 Jul 2024

There’s no job description for the role of First Lady of the United States. Betty Ford described i...

Wed, 24 Jul 2024

In the summer of 1989, Michelle Robinson was an up and coming lawyer at a Chicago law firm when she ...

Mon, 22 Jul 2024

July 22, 1942. The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Warsaw Ghetto, transporting hundreds of thousan...

Wed, 17 Jul 2024

In 1974, Betty Ford was thrust onto the world stage when Richard Nixon resigned and her husband, Ger...

Wed, 10 Jul 2024

In 1905, Eleanor Roosevelt married her distant cousin Franklin, beginning a remarkable and complicat...

Wed, 03 Jul 2024

In 1842, Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois after a stormy romance. Despite ...

Wed, 26 Jun 2024

In 1757, 26-year-old Martha Dandridge Custis was the wealthiest widow in Virginia when she caught th...

Mon, 24 Jun 2024

June 24, 1535. A radical political uprising comes to an end when the city of Münster falls to an Bi...

Wed, 19 Jun 2024

In the spring of 1775, Benjamin Franklin left London for America after years of fruitless attempts t...

Wed, 12 Jun 2024

In 1723, a teenage Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia ready to reinvent himself. He was a pen...

Mon, 10 Jun 2024

 June 10, 1692. Accusations of witchcraft spark hysteria in a town in Massachusetts, leading to...

Wed, 05 Jun 2024

The new book from American History Tellers, The Hidden History of the White House: Power Struggles, ...

Wed, 29 May 2024

Allan Pinkerton started the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to catch robbers, counterfeiters and...

Mon, 27 May 2024

May 27, 1943: A B-24 bomber crashes in the Pacific Ocean, beginning a two year ordeal at sea and in ...

Wed, 22 May 2024

By the late 1800s, the Pinkerton Detective Agency faced public criticism for their anti-labor practi...

Wed, 15 May 2024

In the mid-1870s the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s fame was growing, and founder Allan Pinkerton be...

Mon, 13 May 2024

May 13th 1981: Pope John Paul II is shot in a mysterious assassination plot with potential ties to t...

Wed, 08 May 2024

In the early 1850s, Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton stumbled upon a counterfeiting operation whil...

Wed, 01 May 2024

After the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, America scrambled to assemble boot ca...

Mon, 29 Apr 2024

April 29, 1996. New musical Rent premieres on Broadway, only a few months after the death of the sho...

Wed, 24 Apr 2024

In the summer of 1918, the U.S. successfully led a critical offensive in northern France, finally gi...

Wed, 17 Apr 2024

In January 1918, after months of preparation and planning, American troops finally started to arrive...

Mon, 15 Apr 2024

April 15, 1989: A crowd crush at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England leads t...

Wed, 10 Apr 2024

In the spring of 1917 the U.S. moved closer to entering the Great War. German submarines resumed att...

Wed, 03 Apr 2024

In June 1914, a gunman assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungar...

Mon, 01 Apr 2024

April 1, 1997. The Hale-Bopp Comet reaches the closest point to the sun on its long loop through spa...

Wed, 27 Mar 2024

After 18 months and over two thousand miles, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery had reached the ...

Wed, 20 Mar 2024

In the spring of 1805, Lewis and Clark resumed their journey up the Missouri River in search of the ...

Fri, 15 Mar 2024

March 18, 1314. Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the sta...

Wed, 13 Mar 2024

In 1803, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began a westward journey that would transform A...

Wed, 06 Mar 2024

In 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped her enslaver in Maryland and freed herself. Over the next several ye...

Wed, 28 Feb 2024

In December 1850, Harriet Tubman saved three family members from an auction block in a daring rescue...

Wed, 21 Feb 2024

On the morning of April 16th, 1848, dozens of Washington, D.C. slaveowners woke up to find that thei...

Tue, 20 Feb 2024

February 19, 197 CE. Septimius Severus' victory at the Battle of Lugdunum finally establishes him as...

Wed, 14 Feb 2024

In the 1830s, abolitionism became a political force to be reckoned with. In the face of harassment a...

Wed, 07 Feb 2024

In the early 1800s, slavery rapidly expanded across the American South. But each year, thousands of ...

Wed, 31 Jan 2024

Following the success of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. sought to develop a potentially more powerf...

Wed, 24 Jan 2024

In Spring of 1945, the tides of World War 2 turned. Germany surrendered to the Allies, but Japan vow...

Mon, 22 Jan 2024

January 22, 1879. After years of displacement, the northern Cheyenne, led by Chief Morning Star, fac...

Wed, 17 Jan 2024

In Spring of 1943, hundreds of scientists and technicians moved to a remote location in the mou...

Wed, 10 Jan 2024

In December 1938, a team of German physicists achieved an astonishing scientific breakthrough: they ...

Wed, 03 Jan 2024

In 1948, James Baldwin left for France, hoping to find an escape from the racism he experienced in A...

Wed, 27 Dec 2023

In 1949, aspiring writer Nelle Harper Lee moved from her home in small-town Alabama to New York City...

Wed, 20 Dec 2023

Born into poverty in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin rose to become a celebrated novelist, essayist, p...

Mon, 18 Dec 2023

December 18, 1972. After peace talks break down, US President Richard Nixon announces the start of t...

Wed, 13 Dec 2023

Growing up in the Salinas Valley of Northern California, John Steinbeck dreamed of becoming a profes...

Wed, 06 Dec 2023

In the late 1850s, a young man named Samuel Clemens started out piloting steamboats on the Mississip...

Mon, 04 Dec 2023

December 4, 1991. After 64 years dominating the skies, a series of poor financial decisions forces P...

Wed, 29 Nov 2023

In 1840, eight-year-old Louisa May Alcott moved to the small town of Concord, Massachusetts with her...

Wed, 22 Nov 2023

In February 1826, 17-year-old Edgar Allan Poe was a promising student at the University of Virginia....

Mon, 20 Nov 2023

November 20, 1992. After a year of bad press for Britain's royals, Windsor castle catches fire, rais...

Wed, 15 Nov 2023

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire reduced the city to rubble and ash, reporters fanne...

Wed, 08 Nov 2023

In the wake of a devastating earthquake that rocked the city of San Francisco, thousands of people w...

Wed, 01 Nov 2023

Less than 24 hours after a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, fires were raging across the...

Wed, 25 Oct 2023

In the early morning hours of April 18th, 1906, residents of San Francisco were awakened by the viol...

Wed, 18 Oct 2023

In the midst of the public hysteria surrounding the Salem Witch Trials, a respected Puritan woman na...

Mon, 16 Oct 2023

October 16, 1869. An American trickster masterminds the discovery of a mysterious petrified giant in...

Wed, 11 Oct 2023

By September 1692, the witch panic in Salem, Massachusetts had sent 11 women and men to the gallows....

Wed, 04 Oct 2023

In May 1692, William Phips, the new royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sailed into Bost...

Wed, 27 Sep 2023

By the first week of March 1692, three Salem women had been jailed for witchcraft, and accusations c...

Wed, 20 Sep 2023

In January 1692, two young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts began behaving strangely. They scre...

Wed, 13 Sep 2023

As the nation’s factories and shipyards ramped up production for the war, the demand for labor exp...

Wed, 06 Sep 2023

On December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese warplanes rained death and destruction down on the U.S. na...

Wed, 30 Aug 2023

In 1970, a 22-year-old woman in Texas named Norma McCorvey tried and failed to get an abortion from ...

Wed, 23 Aug 2023

The morning of Nov. 8, 2000, Americans woke up to an undecided election. Pollsters had predicted a c...

Wed, 16 Aug 2023

Before the 1950s, the Supreme Court was best known as an institution that adhered to the status quo....

Wed, 09 Aug 2023

Through most of 1941, as fighting raged across Europe, the United States held back from entering the...

Wed, 02 Aug 2023

After the Civil War, America began to rebuild a shattered nation. For the first time, the country co...

Wed, 26 Jul 2023

In the early 1800s, the United States was growing rapidly, seeking land and resources for its expand...

Wed, 19 Jul 2023

After the War of Independence, the new American government created the Supreme Court to be the final...

Wed, 12 Jul 2023

After Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877, Reconstruction officially came to an end, and ...

Wed, 05 Jul 2023

In 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden vied for the presidency. But when...

Wed, 28 Jun 2023

On Easter Sunday, 1873, an armed white mob battled a Black militia over control of a courthouse in a...

Wed, 21 Jun 2023

In 1870, the ratification of the 15th Amendment enshrined Black men’s right to vote in the Constit...

Wed, 14 Jun 2023

In the spring of 1867, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, the Republican-controlled Congress pa...

Wed, 07 Jun 2023

In December 1865, the first postwar Congress convened in Washington, D.C. With Black Southerners sti...

Wed, 31 May 2023

In the spring of 1865, the United States celebrated the end of four years of Civil War. As American ...

Wed, 24 May 2023

By the early 1970s the United Farm Workers had won a series of successes in California and were atte...

Wed, 17 May 2023

In 1964, the United States finally ended the controversial Bracero Program, which had flooded Americ...

Wed, 10 May 2023

In the 1940s and ‘50s, farm laborers in California, many of them Mexican and Filipino, faced low w...

Wed, 03 May 2023

The 1919 Molasses Flood was a terrifying and telling moment in the history of Boston’s North End. ...

Wed, 26 Apr 2023

On January 15, 1919 a giant storage tank holding more than two million gallons of molasses collapsed...

Wed, 19 Apr 2023

After she was deposed by powerful American business interests, Hawai’i’s Queen Liliʻuokalani li...

Wed, 12 Apr 2023

On December 7, 1941, Hawai’i was hit by one of the most unexpected military assaults in modern war...

Wed, 05 Apr 2023

After Hawai’i became a U.S. Territory in 1900, tourism to the islands exploded. Luxury steamships ...

Wed, 29 Mar 2023

In the early 1900s, an enterprising young American named James Dole introduced pineapples to a windy...

Wed, 22 Mar 2023

In 1893 the independent island kingdom of Hawaiʻi flourished under the leadership of its monarch, Q...

Wed, 15 Mar 2023

Was Aaron Burr raising an army to invade Mexico? Plotting to break apart the Union? Overthrow the go...

Wed, 08 Mar 2023

In the summer of 1807, Richmond, Virginia hosted the most sensational trial in the young nation’s ...

Wed, 01 Mar 2023

In August 1806, Aaron Burr began the final preparations for his mysterious expedition to the western...

Wed, 22 Feb 2023

In the summer of 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr was wanted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton. Th...

Wed, 15 Feb 2023

In July 1804, Aaron Burr faced political rival Alexander Hamilton on the cliffs of Weehawken, New Je...

Wed, 08 Feb 2023

News of the 1848 discovery of gold in California spread quickly, and thousands of Chinese migrants f...

Wed, 01 Feb 2023

In the early 1850s, as people continued to flood West, California’s booming cities experienced rap...

Wed, 25 Jan 2023

For white settlers, the Gold Rush offered a chance for fortune, but for California’s Native inhabi...

Wed, 18 Jan 2023

In early 1849, thousands of gold-hungry Americans began pouring into California from the eastern Uni...

Wed, 11 Jan 2023

​​After the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, hundreds of thousands of prospectors p...

Wed, 04 Jan 2023

The job of guarding the President’s life belongs to the men and women of the United States Secret ...

Wed, 28 Dec 2022

In 1981, a gunman fired six shots at Ronald Reagan after the president gave a speech at a Washington...

Wed, 21 Dec 2022

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his presidential limo thro...

Wed, 14 Dec 2022

In September 1901, President William McKinley visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New Yo...

Wed, 07 Dec 2022

On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washing...

Wed, 30 Nov 2022

The yellow fever epidemic of 1793 posed one of the greatest threats to the young United States. Doct...

Wed, 23 Nov 2022

In 1793, Philadelphia served as the nation’s temporary capital, and the yellow fever epidemic crip...

Wed, 16 Nov 2022

In September 1793, yellow fever continued to ravage Philadelphia. As the death toll mounted, Dr. Ben...

Wed, 09 Nov 2022

In the hot and humid summer of 1793, a deadly epidemic struck Philadelphia, then the capital of the ...

Wed, 02 Nov 2022

During the Golden Age of Piracy, two female pirates became infamous despite their short careers. Ann...

Wed, 26 Oct 2022

In 1717, the pirate known as Blackbeard launched an attack along the Atlantic seaboard, disrupting i...

Wed, 19 Oct 2022

As England waged war against France in 1689, Scottish sailor William Kidd led a deadly mutiny aboard...

Wed, 12 Oct 2022

At the end of the 17th century, pirates stalked the coast of North America and the waters of the Car...

Wed, 05 Oct 2022

When he escaped Nicaragua in 1857, American William Walker was a failed despot responsible for the d...

Wed, 28 Sep 2022

In 1855, William Walker faced a criminal trial in the United States for his illegal, and unsuccessfu...

Wed, 21 Sep 2022

In the mid-1800s, the United States was full of adventurers and entrepreneurs looking to take advant...

Wed, 14 Sep 2022

During the Civil War, Black people in America took the opportunity to free themselves and to serve t...

Wed, 07 Sep 2022

In early 1865, after four long years of bloodshed, the Confederacy was on the brink of defeat. Gener...

Wed, 31 Aug 2022

In 1864, Ulysses S. Grant took charge of the entire Union Army and laid out his ambitious plans to f...

Wed, 24 Aug 2022

In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee made a daring bid for victory. He marched his army nort...

Wed, 17 Aug 2022

As the Civil War raged on, families on the homefront faced increasingly heavy tolls, enduring crippl...

Wed, 10 Aug 2022

The Civil War began as an effort to hold the country together. Few Northern soldiers marched into ba...

Wed, 03 Aug 2022

On April 19th, 1861, an angry mob of Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore tried to stop a regiment ...

Wed, 27 Jul 2022

Over the first decades of the 19th century, Americans fought over whether slavery should be allowed ...

Wed, 20 Jul 2022

The Age of Jackson was a time of intense change and tremendous growth in the United States. But it w...

Wed, 13 Jul 2022

In 1845, newly inaugurated President James Polk made America’s westward expansion a centerpiece of...

Wed, 06 Jul 2022

During the last years of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the American economy flourished. But when hi...

Wed, 29 Jun 2022

During his military career, Andrew Jackson won several ruthless victories over indigenous people. Af...

Wed, 22 Jun 2022

On Andrew Jackson’s inauguration day, citizens mobbed the White House, breaking furniture and fine...

Wed, 15 Jun 2022

In the summer of 1817, President James Monroe toured the country in an effort to unify the ever-grow...

Wed, 08 Jun 2022

In 1814, British troops burned down the White House. That fire would be extinguished, and the Execut...

Wed, 01 Jun 2022

In 1927, a slow-moving catastrophe like the Great Mississippi Flood was perfect material for a relat...

Wed, 25 May 2022

Herbert Hoover’s management of the flood relief garnered widespread praise and put him in position...

Wed, 18 May 2022

Early in the morning on April 22nd, 1927, flood waters from a break in the Mound Landing levee enter...

Wed, 11 May 2022

In the winter and spring of 1927, record-setting rain fell across the central United States. The Mis...

Wed, 04 May 2022

The Lewis and Clark expedition changed the course of American history. But after its bold, charismat...

Wed, 27 Apr 2022

After 18 months and over two thousand miles, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery had reached the ...

Wed, 20 Apr 2022

In the spring of 1805, Lewis and Clark resumed their journey up the Missouri River in search of the ...

Wed, 13 Apr 2022

In 1803, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began a westward journey that would transform A...

Wed, 06 Apr 2022

For Alice Paul and other leading white suffragists, image was important. They published their own ne...

Wed, 30 Mar 2022

As America entered World War I, the suffrage movement split into a two-pronged attack. Alice Paul an...

Wed, 23 Mar 2022

In March 1913, thousands of suffrage activists converged on Washington, D.C. for a new form of prote...

Wed, 16 Mar 2022

As the 20th century dawned, a new generation of women rose to take control of the suffrage cause. Th...

Wed, 09 Mar 2022

On Election Day 1872, Susan B. Anthony walked into a polling place in Rochester, New York and boldly...

Wed, 02 Mar 2022

On July 19th, 1848, 300 female and male delegates gathered in a church in Seneca Falls, New York for...

Wed, 23 Feb 2022

By 1876, criminal boss Big Jim Kennally was ready to put his Lincoln body-snatching plan into motion...

Wed, 16 Feb 2022

By 1876, criminal boss Big Jim Kennally was ready to put his Lincoln body-snatching plan into motion...

Wed, 09 Feb 2022

In the 1870s, a gang from Chicago hatched one of the most audacious criminal plots in American histo...

Wed, 02 Feb 2022

Billy the Kid has become one of the most iconic figures of the American West. But many details of hi...

Wed, 26 Jan 2022

With the bloody Lincoln County War finally over, Billy the Kid tried to make a truce with his arch e...

Wed, 19 Jan 2022

In 1877, Billy the Kid was saved from a life of crime by a wealthy Englishman named John Tunstall, w...

Wed, 12 Jan 2022

Henry McCarty was born in an Irish slum in New York City in 1859. By the time he died from a lawman’...

Wed, 05 Jan 2022

The Philippine-American War marked the emergence of America as a global power. But what has been the...

Wed, 29 Dec 2021

With the war officially over, William Howard Taft took over authority as the Governor of the Philipp...

Wed, 22 Dec 2021

In March 1901, American forces launched a daring raid to capture the Filipino revolutionary leader E...

Wed, 15 Dec 2021

In 1898, America’s victory over Spanish forces in the Philippines suddenly thrust the United State...

Wed, 08 Dec 2021

On February 4th, 1899, war broke out between the United States and the Philippines. The two nations ...

Wed, 01 Dec 2021

Not every case of treason is open and shut. With some accused traitors, questions of their guilt or ...

Wed, 24 Nov 2021

On June 13, 1985, Aldrich Ames packed up six pounds of top secret documents into a plastic bag and w...

Wed, 17 Nov 2021

In September 1949, the world was shocked to learn that the Soviet Union had conducted its first nucl...

Wed, 10 Nov 2021

On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth stepped into the presidential box at Washington’...

Wed, 03 Nov 2021

Early in the Revolutionary War, Major General Benedict Arnold built a reputation as a courageous com...

Wed, 27 Oct 2021

The Roaring 20s are often described as a time of optimism and decadence, teeming with flappers, jazz...

Wed, 20 Oct 2021

On a misty morning in May 1927, Charles Lindbergh climbed into the cramped cockpit of his single eng...

Wed, 13 Oct 2021

In 1921, Republican President Warren G. Harding entered the White House, ushering in a new era of co...

Wed, 06 Oct 2021

In the 1920s, Americans moved to the city in droves, and a new, diverse generation sparked an era of...

Wed, 29 Sep 2021

In 1919, American soldiers returned from the battlefields of Europe to face a nation torn apart by a...

Wed, 22 Sep 2021

Alaska: big, open, frozen and wild. In 1867, the acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire was w...

Wed, 15 Sep 2021

In 1914, America’s National Parks had a problem: no one was using them. And those few that were fa...

Wed, 08 Sep 2021

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the city of San Francisco was torn apart by...

Wed, 01 Sep 2021

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was atop a mountain when he heard the news: an assassin’s bullet...

Wed, 25 Aug 2021

Yellowstone was our nation’s first national park. Its strange, wondrous landscapes were perfect fo...

Wed, 18 Aug 2021

America's national parks are truly among our country's greatest treasures. But many of these beautif...

Wed, 11 Aug 2021

The 1904 St. Louis Olympics were marred by controversy and poorly organized events like the marathon...

Wed, 04 Aug 2021

In the summer of 1904, the young women of the Fort Shaw Indian School basketball team took the St. L...

Wed, 28 Jul 2021

In 1904, St. Louis was thrust into the national spotlight, as it played host to both the World’s F...

Wed, 21 Jul 2021

In the late 1800s, European fascination with the culture of ancient Greece, and a growing interest i...

Wed, 14 Jul 2021

The mystery of what became of the first English colonists has baffled historians for centuries. But ...

Wed, 07 Jul 2021

On April 26, 1587, 117 colonists sailed from England to establish a permanent settlement on the east...

Wed, 30 Jun 2021

In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth the First of England was locked in a battle for global dominanc...

Fri, 25 Jun 2021

In the mid-1800s, the United States was a young nation awash with mercenaries, adventurers, and entr...

Wed, 23 Jun 2021

Like many Americans, Anneliese Bruner didn’t hear about the Tulsa Race Massacre growing up. But wh...

Wed, 16 Jun 2021

On June 2, 1921, thousands of black Tulsans interned at the Tulsa Fairgrounds woke under armed guard...

Wed, 09 Jun 2021

On the night of Tuesday, May 31, 1921, a violent white mob attacked the prosperous Black neighborhoo...

Wed, 02 Jun 2021

As Black teenager Dick Rowland sat in a jail cell at the Tulsa courthouse, news of his arrest flew t...

Wed, 26 May 2021

In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma boasted one of the nation’s most prosperous African-American communities....

Wed, 19 May 2021

On November 24th, 1971, a man on a Boeing 727 bound for Seattle handed a flight attendant a note tha...

Wed, 12 May 2021

John Brown has been called many things: fanatic, hero, terrorist, martyr, zealot. Some of his contem...

Wed, 05 May 2021

On October 17th, 1859, John Brown was barricaded inside the federal armory at Harpers Ferry with his...

Wed, 28 Apr 2021

In December 1858, John Brown was back in Kansas and Missouri, making headlines for dramatic and dead...

Wed, 21 Apr 2021

On the night of May 24th, 1856, radical abolitionist John Brown and seven of his followers crept alo...

Wed, 14 Apr 2021

In the 1850s, the United States was lurching toward a crisis over slavery -- and abolitionist John B...

Wed, 07 Apr 2021

In recent years, there’s been a movement to remove statues of Confederate leaders and other monume...

Wed, 31 Mar 2021

The Vietnam War was one of the most divisive conflicts in American history. Over 58,000 Americans di...

Wed, 24 Mar 2021

Few historic residences are more synonymous with their owners than Graceland. Purchased by Elvis Pre...

Wed, 17 Mar 2021

In the early 1920s, San Francisco was a picturesque city on a narrow, isolated peninsula. Known for ...

Wed, 10 Mar 2021

In 1927, workers began blasting granite rock off a towering cliff in South Dakota’s Black Hills. I...

Wed, 03 Mar 2021

For centuries, sailors and merchants dreamed of finding a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific O...

Wed, 24 Feb 2021

It’s perhaps the most iconic of American monuments -- the Statue of Liberty. A towering 305-foot s...

Wed, 17 Feb 2021

After the 1871 fire destroyed a third of their city, Chicagoans wanted to do more than rebuild. They...

Wed, 10 Feb 2021

As dawn broke on October 10, 1871, the dazed survivors of the Great Chicago Fire stumbled through th...

Wed, 03 Feb 2021

Just before midnight on October 8, 1871, the inferno that had ravaged Chicago’s West Side leapt th...

Wed, 27 Jan 2021

In 1871, Chicago was the fastest growing city in the world. Built almost entirely of wood, it was al...

Wed, 20 Jan 2021

As America prepares to swear in a new president, we’ll look back to the inaugurations of the past....

Wed, 13 Jan 2021

Once the coal miners lost the Battle of Blair Mountain, the story of their uprising was suppressed, ...

Wed, 06 Jan 2021

The Coal Wars reached an explosive climax in August 1921, as thousands of miners furious over the de...

Wed, 30 Dec 2020

In May 1920, Sheriff Sid Hatfield won the loyalty of Mingo County’s miners after a deadly gun batt...

Wed, 23 Dec 2020

In March 1913, famed labor activist Mother Jones was locked up in a shack in Pratt, West Virginia, s...

Wed, 16 Dec 2020

In the early 20th century, coal was the fuel that powered the nation. But the men who mined it in th...

Wed, 09 Dec 2020

Throughout our series, we've seen how social movements and partisan politics helped influence the de...

Wed, 02 Dec 2020

In 1970, a 22-year-old woman in Texas named Norma McCorvey tried and failed to get an abortion from ...

Wed, 25 Nov 2020

The morning of Nov. 8, 2000, Americans woke up to an undecided election. Pollsters had predicted a c...

Wed, 18 Nov 2020

Before the 1950s, the Supreme Court was best known as an institution that adhered to the status quo....

Wed, 11 Nov 2020

Through most of 1941, as fighting raged across Europe, the United States held back from entering the...

Wed, 04 Nov 2020

After the Civil War, America began to rebuild a shattered nation. For the first time, the country co...

Wed, 28 Oct 2020

In the early 1800s, the United States was growing rapidly, seeking land and resources for its expand...

Wed, 21 Oct 2020

After the War of Independence, the new American government created the Supreme Court to be have the ...

Wed, 14 Oct 2020

The year 1968 marked a watershed in American politics. Anti-war protests were roiling the country. C...

Wed, 07 Oct 2020

The 1929 stock market crash saw 14 billion dollars vanish in a matter of hours — and with it, the ...

Wed, 30 Sep 2020

As the Civil War came to a close, the government set its sights once again on the future of the Unit...

Wed, 23 Sep 2020

The United States won the The Mexican–American War in the 1840s, and with it vast new stretches of...

Wed, 16 Sep 2020

Andrew Jackson lost the 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams through what some called a “...

Wed, 09 Sep 2020

In the earliest days of the United States, there was no such thing as an organized political party. ...

Wed, 02 Sep 2020

Throughout our series, corporate giants and their exploitation of workers was disturbing evidence of...

Wed, 26 Aug 2020

In the spring of 1894, hundreds of unemployed workers trudged through rain and snow on a 400-mile tr...

Wed, 19 Aug 2020

As the century came to a close, labor unrest reached explosive new heights. Industrial expansion mad...

Wed, 12 Aug 2020

Amid the glamor and growth of the Gilded Age, racism and anti-immigrant hostility swept the nation. ...

Wed, 05 Aug 2020

In the spring of 1883, Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt threw the grandest party New York had ever seen, claimin...

Wed, 29 Jul 2020

In the 1870s and 1880s, businessmen clawed their way to the top of the new industrial economy, accum...

Wed, 22 Jul 2020

In 1869, America connected its vast, sprawling territory with its most ambitious project to date: th...

Wed, 15 Jul 2020

When the events of Stonewall happened in 1969, Eric Marcus was just a boy away at a New Jersey summe...

Wed, 08 Jul 2020

After a late-night police raid on the Stonewall Inn in June 1969, the LGBTQ community fought back in...

Wed, 01 Jul 2020

Resistance at restaurants in San Francisco and Philadelphia showcased the building tension as trans ...

Wed, 24 Jun 2020

As the 1960s dawned, LGBTQ activists began to voice frustration with the gradual approach to civil r...

Wed, 17 Jun 2020

In the summer of 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn sparked a riot on the streets of Greenwich...

Wed, 10 Jun 2020

JFK said that nothing in the 1960s was "...more impressive to mankind, or more important for the lon...

Wed, 03 Jun 2020

In times of crisis, Americans had always put their confidence in their country’s superiority in po...

Wed, 27 May 2020

Information sharing was normal in the global scientific community, but when it came to rockets, norm...

Wed, 20 May 2020

Remember Werner von Braun? We talked a little bit about him in our Cold War series. He was in charge...

Wed, 13 May 2020

As the nation’s factories and shipyards ramped up production for the war, the demand for labor exp...

Wed, 06 May 2020

On December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese warplanes rained death and destruction down on the U.S. na...

Wed, 29 Apr 2020

In 1799, the U.S. government imposed a new tax on houses, land, and slaves to fund an expanded milit...

Wed, 22 Apr 2020

In February 1831, a solar eclipse caused the skies to darken over the isolated backwater of Southamp...

Wed, 15 Apr 2020

As a new century dawned on the United States, an enslaved blacksmith named Gabriel began planning a ...

Wed, 08 Apr 2020

In 1794, anti-government protests grew into an all-out rebellion, and President Washington faced his...

Wed, 01 Apr 2020

Only a few years after Shays’ Rebellion was suppressed, a new revolt broke out in western Pennsylv...

Wed, 25 Mar 2020

Tensions reached a climax in the freezing winter of 1787, as Daniel Shays and 1,500 rebel soldiers s...

Wed, 18 Mar 2020

The dust had barely settled on the American Revolution when new unrest erupted in western Massachuse...

Wed, 11 Mar 2020

In light of growing concerns about the coronavirus, we’re revisiting an episode we ran last spring...

Wed, 04 Mar 2020

New archaeological evidence suggests mass graves holding the remains of victims of the Tulsa Race Ma...

Wed, 26 Feb 2020

UCLA environmental historian Jon Christensen discusses Los Angeles, its never-quenched thirst for wa...

Wed, 19 Feb 2020

With the failure of the Watterson brothers’ banks, the Owens Valley community was forced to abando...

Wed, 12 Feb 2020

After years of letting their water be used by the city of Los Angeles, the farmers and ranchers of t...

Wed, 05 Feb 2020

By 1912, the Los Angeles aqueduct project was nearing completion. But as it approached the finish li...

Wed, 29 Jan 2020

By 1907, the city of Los Angeles had found a solution to its water problem. Two hundred miles north ...

Wed, 22 Jan 2020

By the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles had grown from a dusty, crime-ridden pueblo into a...

Wed, 18 Dec 2019

The Civil War forced the warring families of Clay County into an uneasy truce. The Garrards, Whites,...

Wed, 11 Dec 2019

The longest and bloodiest feud in American history erupted in the 1840s in Clay County, Kentucky —...

Wed, 20 Nov 2019

In September 2019 Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren invoked the memory ...

Wed, 13 Nov 2019

In the wake of the biggest workplace catastrophe in the city of New York, the survivors of the Trian...

Wed, 06 Nov 2019

Two years after the labor strikes that shook the city of New York, the workers of Triangle factory r...

Wed, 30 Oct 2019

Inspired by the labor strikes at Triangle and other factories in Lower Manhattan, more than 30,000 g...

Wed, 23 Oct 2019

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, claiming the li...

Wed, 16 Oct 2019

New York City was founded on the Dutch principles of tolerance and capitalism, both of which were ne...

Wed, 09 Oct 2019

In the years after Adrian Van der Donck won a municipal charter for New Amsterdam, and under Peter S...

Wed, 02 Oct 2019

Peter Stuyvesant was fresh from losing a leg in battle against the Spanish when he arrived in Manhat...

Wed, 25 Sep 2019

Just as it was becoming a New World success story, disaster came to New Amsterdam. Willem Kieft, the...

Wed, 18 Sep 2019

New Amsterdam was a desperate place. For the first decade of its existence, the Dutch city on the ti...

Wed, 11 Sep 2019

Twelve years after Henry Hudson's 1609 trip charting the Hudson River, the Dutch used his voyage as ...

Wed, 04 Sep 2019

In 1609, a headstrong English sea captain named Henry Hudson set out on behalf of the Dutch East Ind...

Wed, 28 Aug 2019

The murder of Emmett Till galvanized the nascent civil rights movement. But the full story of what h...

Wed, 21 Aug 2019

The Alsos mission had a hard-charging leader in Boris Pash and an eccentric band of recruits. But if...

Wed, 14 Aug 2019

As the Nazis inched closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon, panic grew among the Allied forces. The Al...

Wed, 07 Aug 2019

By mid-1944, the Allies’ fight to track down and stop the Nazi atomic program had met with failure...

Wed, 31 Jul 2019

In early 1944, the Allies developed a desperate plan to destroy several massive bunkers in Nazi-cont...

Wed, 24 Jul 2019

The discovery of uranium fission in Nazi Germany in 1938 terrified Allied nuclear scientists—espec...

Wed, 17 Jul 2019

The Second World War ended with two black mushroom clouds rising over the scorched remains of Hirosh...

Wed, 03 Jul 2019

The Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most iconic monuments to freedom. As we head into the Fo...

Wed, 26 Jun 2019

Nearly a century after a white mob leveled the affluent Tulsa district known as Black Wall Street, h...

Wed, 19 Jun 2019

On June 2, 1921, thousands of black Tulsans interned at the Tulsa Fairgrounds woke under armed guard...

Wed, 12 Jun 2019

By midnight on Tuesday, May 31, 1921, some Greenwood residents assumed the riot was calming down. Ma...

Wed, 05 Jun 2019

As Dick Rowland sat in a jail cell at the Tulsa courthouse on Tuesday, the news of his arrest and ru...

Wed, 29 May 2019

Between 1838 and 1890, thousands of African Americans moved to Oklahoma, brought there as Cherokee s...

Fri, 24 May 2019

This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of...

Thu, 23 May 2019

This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of...

Wed, 22 May 2019

Pulitzer Prize winner. National Book Award winner. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Today Da...

Wed, 15 May 2019

On March 8, 1971, seven ordinary Americans broke into a poorly guarded FBI regional office in Media,...

Wed, 08 May 2019

Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI carried out more than 2,000 top secret spying operations aimed at Ame...

Wed, 01 May 2019

The rise of fascism and World War II shifted the FBI’s focus in the 1940s from fighting midwestern...

Wed, 24 Apr 2019

During the mid-1930s, the FBI’s public relations department had effectively changed the image of i...

Wed, 17 Apr 2019

J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI when he was just 29 years old. His orders? Clean up the B...

Wed, 10 Apr 2019

By the turn of the century, radical anarchists were becoming a growing -- and volatile -- political ...

Wed, 03 Apr 2019

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord.” That’s the opening line of “The B...

Wed, 27 Mar 2019

As legal challenges to his New Deal programs mounted, President Roosevelt and his attorney general d...

Wed, 20 Mar 2019

After two of President Roosevelt’s closest advisors competed to create a new federal jobs program,...

Wed, 13 Mar 2019

The Great Depression wasn’t the only crisis facing the country when Franklin Roosevelt took office...

Wed, 06 Mar 2019

With the country was still hobbled by the Depression, New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt pr...

Wed, 27 Feb 2019

Factories have shut down, banks have failed, and millions are out of work. As the Depression worsens...

Wed, 20 Feb 2019

The Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt on October 29, 1929, with the collapse of the U.S. st...

Wed, 13 Feb 2019

"Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it." On today’s show, we’ll consider ...

Wed, 06 Feb 2019

A special series with Legal Wars. The whole world was watching, and that’s exactly what the defend...

Wed, 30 Jan 2019

A special series with Legal Wars. In 1969, the war in the streets became a war in the courtroom. The...

Wed, 23 Jan 2019

A special series with our sibling show Legal Wars. The 1968 Democratic National Convention attracted...

Wed, 02 Jan 2019

We live in historic times, but how do they compare to that other tumultuous era of American history ...

Wed, 26 Dec 2018

The year 1968 marked a watershed in American politics. Anti-war protests were roiling the country. C...

Wed, 19 Dec 2018

The 1929 stock market crash saw 14 billion dollars vanish in a matter of hours — and with it, the ...

Wed, 12 Dec 2018

As the Civil War came to a close, the government set its sights once again on the future of the Unit...

Wed, 05 Dec 2018

The United States won the The Mexican–American War in the 1840s, and with it vast new stretches of...

Wed, 28 Nov 2018

Andrew Jackson lost the 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams through what some called a “...

Wed, 21 Nov 2018

In the earliest days of the United States, there was no such thing as an organized political party. ...

Tue, 20 Nov 2018

Named after one of the greatest U.S. presidents, the Lincoln Motor Company has become as ingrained i...

Wed, 14 Nov 2018

We conclude our series on the American Civil Right Movement with an interview with a woman who was t...

Wed, 07 Nov 2018

Seeking to build upon the gains of the early 1960s, Civil Rights activists pushed forward on a serie...

Wed, 31 Oct 2018

As the Civil Rights movement entered the landmark years of 1963 and 1964, activists had faced many c...

Wed, 24 Oct 2018

As the Civil Rights movement entered the Sixties, a new generation of activists took the fore. Frust...

Wed, 17 Oct 2018

After the Brown V. Board of Education ruling, civil rights activists had legal standing to desegrega...

Wed, 10 Oct 2018

In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal, on a “separate but equal” basi...

Wed, 03 Oct 2018

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing the slave...

Wed, 26 Sep 2018

In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed into law the The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or AN...

Wed, 19 Sep 2018

Alaska: big, open, frozen and wild. In 1867, the acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire was w...

Wed, 12 Sep 2018

In 1914, America’s National Parks had a problem: no one was using them. And those few that were fa...

Wed, 05 Sep 2018

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the city of San Francisco was torn apart by...

Wed, 29 Aug 2018

Put out to pasture, thinking his political career over, Theodore Roosevelt was atop a mountain when ...

Wed, 22 Aug 2018

Yellowstone was our nation’s first national park. Its strange, wondrous landscapes were perfect fo...

Wed, 15 Aug 2018

America's greatest National Parks are truly one of our country's greatest treasures. But many beauti...

Wed, 08 Aug 2018

We've come to the end of our series on the American Revolution, but we can't say goodbye without say...

Wed, 01 Aug 2018

Millions immigrated to the United States after its founding, entranced with the promise of a better ...

Wed, 25 Jul 2018

The Revolution was fought for freedom, at least in name. Calls for freedom filled the air. No taxati...

Wed, 18 Jul 2018

In 1788, the hot gossip in posh British circles was all about France and America. For their friends ...

Wed, 11 Jul 2018

It’s 1786. For two years the city of Philadelphia has been celebrating its independence. For citiz...

Wed, 04 Jul 2018

In 1776, the British Under Secretary of State for the American Colonies was giddy. The Americans nee...

Wed, 27 Jun 2018

It’s 1754, and the British had developed thirteen colonies along the eastern seaboard of the Ameri...

Wed, 20 Jun 2018

If you lived in an American city at the turn of the century, you got all of your news from a single ...

Wed, 06 Jun 2018

JFK said that nothing in the 1960s was "...more impressive to mankind, or more important for the lon...

Wed, 30 May 2018

In times of crisis, Americans had always put their confidence in their country’s superiority ...

Wed, 23 May 2018

Information sharing was normal in the global scientific community, but when it came to rockets, norm...

Wed, 16 May 2018

Remember Werner von Braun? We talked a little bit about him in our Cold War series. He was in charge...

Thu, 10 May 2018

The phone in your hand is more powerful than all of the computers that put a man on the moon, combin...

Wed, 02 May 2018

“Manifest Destiny” is a uniquely American idea. The phrase captured the sense of inevitability—...

Wed, 25 Apr 2018

During the last years of Jackson's presidency, the economy flourished. The national debt was paid in...

Wed, 18 Apr 2018

During his political rise, Jackson distinguished himself with his ability to exact ruthless military...

Wed, 11 Apr 2018

From the beginning, Jackson's administration was riddled with controversy. Citizens mobbed the White...

Wed, 04 Apr 2018

In the summer of 1817, President James Monroe toured the country in an effort to unite the ever-grow...

Wed, 28 Mar 2018

In August 1814, the White House burned. A fire that would eventually consume the entire nation in Ci...

Wed, 21 Mar 2018

Do you know the record for the longest ratification period of any constitutional amendment? Lillian ...

Wed, 14 Mar 2018

The people had spoken: They wanted beer, and they wanted it now, but not just for drinking. Protesto...

Wed, 07 Mar 2018

Closing Time by Daniel Francis provides a good account of the border wars and smuggling across the n...

Wed, 28 Feb 2018

The rise of the speakeasy was one of many unintended consequences of Prohibition - and others were m...

Wed, 21 Feb 2018

While Prohibition was successful in closing the saloon, it didn’t quench America’s thirst. Enter...

Wed, 14 Feb 2018

When a German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Lusitania on Friday, May 7th, 1915, Americans found two new e...

Wed, 07 Feb 2018

On January 17, 1920, the United States passed the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, ushering in...

Wed, 31 Jan 2018

We’re closing out our series on the Cold War with two interviews with fascinating historians. Firs...

Wed, 24 Jan 2018

In the early 1970s, while trying to wind down the war in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon made overt...

Wed, 17 Jan 2018

America sent a man to the moon in 1969, and with Neil Armstrong’s first steps, the United States p...

Wed, 10 Jan 2018

Americans were desperate to find hope in the shadow of the bomb.Miracle cures, cheap energy, and eve...

Wed, 03 Jan 2018

What is the United States to do when direct conflict with the Soviet Union promises almost certain a...

Wed, 03 Jan 2018

Forget trenches, infantry and tanks. The United States and Soviet Union fought the Cold War with ide...

Wed, 03 Jan 2018

For nearly 50 years, the United States and Soviet Union waged a global war of ideas fueled by politi...

Wed, 13 Dec 2017

American History Tellers. Our History, Your Story. Premieres January 3rd.See Privacy Policy at http...