America - still a young country by world standards - began as an experiment in self-government. This collection includes stories of America's people as they follow a path of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
During World War I, Harry Truman (a future American president) was serving with the American Expeditionary Forces near Verdun, France. He had be...
This image depicts page 2 of Harry Truman's 21 January 1919 letter to Bess. In this letter, he discusses the "flu." At the time, Truman was in ...
This memo, discussing SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) Critical Items, reports on concerns about O-ring failures. On the cause of a failure mode, the ...
This 17 December 1982 memo, discussing SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) Critical Items, reports on O-ring failures in a test mode: ...O-ring can withstan...
This is one of the original manuscripts which Francis Scott Key penned following the Battle of Fort McHenry. It is online, courtesy the Smithson...
Image of a U.S. State Department memo detailing the Korean Ambassador's words of appreciation for American help in Korea. Click on the image for a be...
Bookcover image of Steven Austin: Empresario of Texas, by Professor Gregg Cantrell.
The follow excerpts from John Brown's Body—a 15,000-line epic Civil-War poem by Stephen Vincent Benet, published in 1928—tell the story of...
In 1858, an enslaved woman named Ann Maria Jackson and her seven children (ranging in age from three or four to sixteen) were about to be sold at a pu...
This now-declassified cable from the Secretary of War (Henry Stimson) to President Harry Truman (who was attending the Potsdam Conference in Germany) ...
Parliament requires all newspapers with mastheads to be printed on specially embossed paper, but what if the news gets printed on paper without a mast...
People who were opposed to Prohibition, and the Volstead Act which would enforce it, challenged the law in the federal courts. This article is one wh...
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