On June 15 Margaret Jones of Charlestown became the first person in Massachusetts to be executed for witchcraft. She was New England’s second such victim; the first had been Alse (or Alice) Young of Windsor, Connecticut, hanged on May 26, 1647. Little is known about Alice Young. As early as 1638, however, Dorothy Talbye was hanged in Boston for killing her child at the behest (as she admitted) of Satan.

The evidence against Jones, as recorded in Gov. John Winthrop’s diary, was strong. Her “malignant touch” could cause illness in people she disliked. She practiced as a healer, and her medicines “were harmless, as aniseed, liquors, etc., yet had extraordinary violent effects.” She sometimes put a curse on those who refused her services, “and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued . . . beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.” She also performed feats of prophecy and clairvoyance.

By itself this assortment of talents was not enough to convict Jones. Physical evidence of trafficking with the devil was needed. One widely respected scholar had written, “Witches have ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, which appeareth to them, sometimes in one shape and sometimes in another; as in the shape of a man, woman, boy, dog, cat, foal, hare, rat, toad, etc.” Accordingly, in May the General Court ordered Jones and her husband, Thomas (who was also accused), to be confined in separate rooms and watched around the clock. This investigative method had been used with evident success during a recent outbreak of witchcraft in England, where two hundred witches were killed between 1645 and 1647.

Sure enough, relates Winthrop, “in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms . . . a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it was vanished.” A strip search yielded further corroboration. The same scholar had told how witches “hath some big or little teat upon their body, and in some secret place, where [an imp] sucketh them.” Jones’s examiners discovered “an apparent teat in her secret parts as fresh as if it had been newly sucked.”

To the seventeenth-century mind, there was no question about the existence of witches or about what was to be done with them. Exodus 22:18 commanded, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and John Calvin had written: “The Bible teaches that there are witches and that they must be slain. . . . this law of God is a universal law.” Still, the case of Margaret Jones was, for its time, a model of legal procedure. It relied on verified evidence, unlike the famous 1692 outbreak at Salem, where acknowledged hallucinations were accepted as fact.

“The same day and hour she was executed,” Winthrop concludes, “there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc.” Jones’s husband, who was acquitted, made heavy weather of his own when he decided, understandably, to leave Massachusetts. He boarded a ship bound for Barbados, which almost immediately began to roll violently. After Jones was returned to shore and thrown in prison, the ship stopped rolling.

Fifteen more witches were put to death in New England between Margaret Jones’s hanging and 1662—about one a year. The next three decades saw only two more hangings for witchcraft, until the terrible revival at Salem. That tragedy, combined with a growing appreciation of the differences among science, religion, and superstition, virtually ended witchcraft trials in America, though one may have taken place in Rhode Island as late as 1728. And in 1863, a historian relates, “a mob of small tradesmen” in Essex County, England, subjected “an aged deaf-and-dumb person . . . who was supposed to be a wizard” to a medieval-style trial by water. He did not survive.

For Utah’s Mormon pioneers the spring of 1848 brimmed with promise. They had been arriving since the previous July, hoping in that harsh and remote land to finally escape persecution. Their trip through the desert had been arduous, and the ensuing winter had been fierce. But now, amidst glorious mountain scenery, as towns arose in the desert and the sun shone on acres of sprouting crops, they could almost feel God smiling.

Then the crickets came. In late May dense swarms of the buzzing, ravenous insects—described as “a cross between the spider and the buffalo”—devastated the Mormons’ fields. One pioneer’s diary recorded: “Today to our utter astonishment, the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them. They first attacked a patch of beans for us and in twenty minutes there was not a vestige of them to be seen. They next swept over peas, then came into our garden; took everything clean.”

Settlers tried to beat them off with sticks, but it was like bailing out the Mississippi River with a teaspoon. Drowning them in irrigation ditches was no use either; the tenacious crickets came back to life as soon as they were dry. The Mormons built fires, banged on pans, and heaped up carcasses at the edge of fields to take advantage of the crickets’ penchant for cannibalism. Nothing worked. Finally, helpless against nature, the settlers prayed for divine assistance.

They got it. After two weeks of insect depredation, flocks of sea gulls miles across suddenly descended on the settlement. Some weary Mormons thought the birds were bringing more trouble until they swooped down and started voraciously devouring the crickets—gobbling bugs by the beakful, vomiting them up, then gobbling more. To the amazed settlers, it seemed the birds’ intention was to kill crickets rather than to feed themselves. Experienced mountaineers said they had never seen sea gulls so far from the ocean before.

On June 9 church elders wrote to their leader, Brigham Young, in Iowa, “The sea gulls have come in large flocks from the lake and sweep the cricket as they go; it seems the hand of the Lord is in our favor.” By July 21 they could confidently write, “The crickets are still quite numerous and busy eating, but between the gulls and our own efforts and the growth of our crops we shall raise much grain in spite of them.”

Modern revisionists have questioned whether the episode was really miraculous. Pacific sea gulls, it is pointed out, routinely migrate to the Great Salt Lake and feed on insects. Disgorging the indigestible parts of their food is normal as well. One recent paper even argues that the settlers should have eaten the protein-rich crickets themselves, as Indians did—though since Mormons can’t even drink coffee, they would probably have found a rule against it.

Yet it’s easy to understand why the Mormons saw, and still see, the coming of the sea gulls as a miracle. Since 1831 the hardy band of believers had been almost constantly on the move, from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah, seeking in each place to build the Zion prophesied in their scriptures. Financial trouble, dissension, and hostility from their neighbors had doomed all previous efforts. When the crickets attacked their crops, some settlers talked of pulling up stakes yet again and heading back East or moving on to California or Oregon. But the arrival of the sea gulls, seemingly from heaven, was an unmistakable sign that this time things would be different. Today a monument in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square commemorates the birds that finally brought an end to the Mormons’ long pilgrimage and reassured them that after seventeen years of running, they would not have to run anymore.

After America declared war on Spain in late April, heroic acts filled the newspapers almost daily. There was Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet at Manila; Schley’s victory at Santiago; Hobson’s valiant scuttling of the Merrimack; and of course the bloody land battles at Las Guasìmas, El Caney, and San Juan. In a brief war chock-full of glorious (or at least glorified) exploits, the least heroic incident must surely be the Navy’s bloodless capture of Guam.

On June 4 the cruiser USS Charleston and three troop transports sailed from Honolulu to reinforce Dewey at Manila. In his instructions to the Charleston, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long had added (like a wife telling her husband to pick up a quart of milk while walking the dog), “On your way, you are hereby directed to stop at the Spanish Island of Guam.” Capt. Henry Glass was told to capture the island, destroy any Spanish vessels and fortifications, and take prisoners. “These operations . . . should not occupy more than one or two days,” Long predicted.

Historians discussing the capture of Guam invariably compare it to comic opera, which it does resemble, but only in retrospect. To the men involved it was deadly serious. Guam was Spain’s main outpost in the Pacific, and according to recent visitors, it was heavily defended. As the Charleston steamed onward, its crew—mostly raw California farmboys—busily practiced firing the ship’s guns. The night before the expected battle, a few men prepared letters for their families in case they did not survive.

At dawn on June 20 the Charleston entered Guam’s San Luis d’Apra Harbor. Glass spotted a ship and prepared for battle, but it turned out to be a Japanese merchant vessel. After sounding for mines, the Charleston approached Fort Santiago, perched on a tall bluff overlooking the harbor. The fort was too high to be reached by the ship’s guns, yet sailing past it would expose the ship to potentially devastating fire. Glass fearlessly gave the order to proceed. As it turned out, he need not have worried; Fort Santiago had long since been abandoned.

The Charleston steamed ahead to Fort Santa Cruz, where the island’s main defenses were thought to be located, and opened fire. It waited for a response but got none; Fort Santa Cruz was abandoned as well. At this point four Spanish officials who had been watching from the beach got into a boat and rowed out to the Charleston. Upon boarding, they learned to their great surprise that they were prisoners of war. Guam had received no word from Spain since early April, and the officials were unaware that war had been declared.

By some accounts, the Spanish officials had thought the bombardment was a salute; others say they merely wondered what was going on. Glass explained the situation and then paroled the prisoners so they could bring his demands to the colony’s governor. With some foot-dragging, the governor surrendered Guam and the rest of Spain’s Ladrone Islands (now known as the Marianas) the next morning.

In the peace treaty signed that December, America kept Guam but returned the rest of the islands to Spain. The reason for this decision was not magnanimity but expedience: With the Philippines stubbornly refusing to be liberated, the Navy did not need any extra responsibilities, especially for the sake of a few dots on a map. Spain immediately sold the remaining Ladrones to Germany, and during World War I they were occupied by Japan, which eventually began erecting military installations. In December 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed and Japan captured Guam, the Americans wished their predecessors in 1898 had been more ruthless about holding on to the spoils of war. Not until July 1944 did the Marines retake Guam—this time in a manner and at a cost that was anything but comic.

On May 3, in the cases of Shelley v. Kraemer and Hurd v. Hodge, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial covenants in real estate deeds were not legally enforceable. Such covenants—which usually prevented homeowners from selling their houses to nonwhites—were not illegal in themselves, since private agreements were beyond the reach of civil rights laws. But under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Court ruled, the apparatus of state or federal government could not be used to enforce them, because that would involve the government in an act of discrimination. The decision, written by Chief Justice Fred Vinson, was endorsed by a margin of 6 to 0. Three justices recused themselves from the case, presumably because they owned houses in restricted neighborhoods (one of which barred blacks, Jews, and Persians, among others).

In the aftermath of the decision, some white homeowners complained that the Court had pulled the rug from under them. Suddenly, by judicial fiat, they faced a potentially large drop in the value of property that represented much of their life savings. Blacks, of course, felt just the opposite. The country’s severe postwar housing crunch had been greatly exacerbated for them, since almost all the suburban developments springing up around the country were restricted.

On the 100 block of Washington’s Bryant Street, the Washington Post found reactions varying with race. Of the block’s thirty-one houses, twenty were covered by a racial covenant, but in recent years most of them had been sold to nonwhites anyway. One of these sales, to James M. Hurd—variously described as black and Mohawk Indian—had been invalidated by a lower court. That decision was appealed in Hurd v. Hodge, which the block’s dwindling band of white homeowners saw as their last stand. On hearing of the decision, a white resident said, “I’m putting up the for-sale sign tomorrow. . . . God only knows how much I’ll get for my house.”

By contrast, a black newcomer to the neighborhood exulted, “I knew it couldn’t stay that way. This is America, brother.” Another black resident recalled discovering the restriction on his house after he had bought it: “When I found out, I wanted to get out right quick, but I had no place to go. It’s a relief, I tell you, to know we’re safe here now.”

A former leader of a white homeowners’ group decried real estate agents who sold covenanted houses to blacks, calling them “whelps who traffic in the welfare of decent citizens.” He expressed hope that the Supreme Court decision would not be the last word on residential segregation: “I’m sure there will be methods devised that will protect people who want to have neighbors who think along the same lines. I have no compunctions against deserving colored people trying to get ahead, but I think they would be happier living among their own people, just as we feel better among our own.”

His remarks proved prescient. Even today residential integration remains far from reality, as most people can verify by looking out the window. Custom, intimidation, informal agreements, and simple economics have often proved as effective as legal covenants. Still, the Supreme Court decisions ensured that the instruments of the state would not be involved in perpetuating segregation. Equally important, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus curiae brief opposing enforcement of the covenants, its first such action in a major civil rights case. The federal government would go on to take an increasingly assertive role in the civil rights struggles of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

On May 3 the city of Chicago, birthplace of the skyscraper, regained a measure of civic pride when the Sears Tower topped out at 1,454 feet to become the world’s tallest building—104 feet higher than New York City’s World Trade Center. Gordon Metcalf, the then recently retired chairman of Sears, explained, “Being the largest retailer in the world, we thought we should have the largest headquarters in the world.” In fact, though, when Sears first decided to build its new headquarters six years earlier, it had had no intention of breaking any records. Early plans called for a short, squatty building, until executives decided that floors the size of several city blocks would be too hard to rent out. The design got narrower and taller until finally—right around the time the New York Mets were besting the Chicago Cubs for the National League East title—Sears decided to go all out and steal the building-league championship from Chicago’s traditional rival. The design was unveiled in July 1970.

The building consists of nine seventy-five-foot-square steel vertical tubes of varying heights, bound together in a three-by-three grid to provide much-needed stability against Chicago’s famous winds. Its 110 floors, served by 102 elevators, accommodate more than sixteen thousand workers, while seven separate lobbies—three at ground level and four in the sky—handle the crunch when they all arrive at 9:00 A.M. Critics were impressed with the tower’s innovative structural design, extensive use of automation, and flexible interior space. The external appearance was less well received. One writer said it resembled “a driftwood carving made by some giant”; another called it “not unlike staggered stacks of catalogs.”

In planning its $150 million edifice, Sears included rental space that would eventually be absorbed to house an ever-expanding Sears work force: seven thousand in 1973, ten thousand in 1983, thirteen thousand in 1998. Things didn’t work out that way. Over the ensuing years America’s buying habits changed enormously, and until recently Sears’s response was slow and uncertain. With the company’s survival threatened, its huge building on the fringe of Chicago’s Loop district became too much of a financial drain. In the early 1990s Sears moved its headquarters to suburban Hoffman Estates, and while it officially retains title to the eponymous tower for tax purposes, the building is controlled by a Canadian company.

To make matters worse, it isn’t even the world’s tallest anymore. The twin Petronas Towers, opened in 1996 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, stretch 1,483 feet into the sky, and in 2001 a 1,509-foot building is projected to open in Shanghai, China. Chicagoans grumble that Petronas cheated by putting tall ornamental spires on top of its towers. The Sears Tower still has the highest occupied floor, they point out, and will retain that status even after the Shanghai behemoth is built. The International Council on Tall Buildings, located in low-rise Easton, Pennsylvania, refuses to crown a single champion, saying that each building is the leader in its own category. Using yet another definition, the 378-foot television antenna atop New York City’s World Trade Center makes it the world’s tallest office building, salvaging for third-place New York a tenuous pretext to brag—not that it’s ever needed one.