American History Story Briefs

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."

This map illustrates the plan of siege for Yorktown and Gloucester Point.

This map, engraved by Francis Shallus, depicts British and American-French positions for the Battle of Yorktown during October, 1781.

During the 1930s, photographers like Dorothea Lange documented the desperate conditions of migrant farm workers in America, including their efforts to...

As he traveled to Washington for his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln was told of a plot to kill him.

No one can be totally sure that the rock depicted in this image - known as Plymouth Rock - is really the stepping stone on which William Bradford (and...

"Houston, we've had a problem," are the words Apollo 13's crew used to alert ground control of a near-fatal episode in space. Did the crew of Apollo 1...

October 23 is "World Polio Day." Step back to a time when Boards of Health issue warning signs to guard against contracting polio in the early 20th ce...

Sermons, like this one from clergy like Abraham Keteltas, supported colonial revolutionary ideas by saying that God and Biblical authority backed thei...

Attending the Potsdam Conference in Europe, President Truman wanted to avoid dropping an atomic bomb over Japan until he had left the meetings.

Although doctors searched for the derringer ball that killed Abraham Lincoln, they could not locate it with their probe. Something else had to happen ...

Life was not easy for President Johnson and Robert McNamara (Johnson's Secretary of Defense) as the Vietnam War dragged on.

Photographic image of Ida Saxton McKinley who married William McKinley on January 25, 1871at the First Presbyterian Church in Canton, Ohio.

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