Bruce Watson is a Contributing Editor of American Heritage and has authored several critically-acclaimed books, He writes a history blog at The Attic.
In the summer of 1852, the Fourth of July passed quietly in Rochester, New York. Thunder struck on the Fifth.
D-Day planners gave American paratroopers an especially difficult assignment — jump out of C-47s into Nazi-held territory just after midnight, capture key bridges, crossroads, and towns, and prevent German counterattacks against Allied forces on the beachheads.
History professors Roberts and Smith recently co-authored A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle (Basic Books), from which this essay is adapted. The book traces Mantle's ascendance as an icon of the 1950s and baseball's place in American culture.
While cleaning out my grandmother’s home, my mother and I came across a sepia-tone postcard tucked among a pile of old photos. The postcard featured 15 remarkably hairy baseball players. Underneath the players the words: “The House of David Ball Team. Benton Harbor, Michigan. 31.”
Knowing that my grandmother, by then in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, wouldn’t be the best resource for information, I took to Twitter to share my discovery. Many were just as curious as I was, but a handful knew who the House of David Ball Team was, and they shared with me stories of the dark, intriguing history behind the players and the religious commune of which they were members.
As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be in them.
In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy had committed the nation “to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” A little over eight years later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 mission that simultaneously ended the Soviet-American space race and met America’s goal with more than five months to spare.
President Lincoln arrived late. By the time he and the First Lady took their seats in the House chamber, they had missed the evening’s convening prayer and Vice President Hannibal Hamlin’s opening remarks. The Philadelphia merchant George Stuart was well into his speech when the audience spotted the Lincolns and greeted them with “a tempest of applause” followed by a standing ovation that brought the proceedings to a temporary halt.
In the winter of 1778, fewer than a dozen American soldiers, entrenched in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, repulsed a British force of over 100. The skirmish, known as Scott’s Farm, was tactically insignificant. But the daring do of the rebels and their leader provided a jolt of adrenaline to the army languishing at Valley Forge.
Their leader was Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III, a young captain of Virginia dragoons who had defeated a Hessian regiment at the Battle of Edgar's Lane and who later won a gold medal from Congress for his actions during the Battle of Paulus Hook.
I remember when I first became an admirer of Robert M. La Follette, Sr. I was fifteen years old and deep in Walter Millis’s Road to War, a chronicle of how the United States got involved in the First World War. I was strongly influenced by antiwar novels, memoirs, movies, and plays like A Farewell to Arms, All Quiet on the Western Front, and many others. I thought that the war itself was a cruel and meaningless slaughter and America’s entry a tragedy. (I haven’t changed my mind about that.)