As defeat became inevitable in the summer of 1945, Japan's government and the Allies could not agree on surrender terms, especially regarding the future of Emperor Hirohito and his throne.
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American leaders called the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki our 'least abhorrent choice,' but there were alternatives to the nuclear attacks.
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U.S. military leaders drew up elaborate plans to invade Japan, with estimates of American casualties ranging as high as two to four million, given the terrible losses at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
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In 1947, former Secretary of War Henry Stimson recalled the agonizing decision to use the bomb: "This deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice."
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When the Pentagon wanted a photographer to record the largest airborne assault in the Vietnam War, the most qualified candidate was a young French woman.
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As a young man, Theodore Roosevelt struggled through a brutal winter on a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory. The adventure launched a love affair with the western U.S.
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“I will leave this house only if I am dead,” the prominent New York doctor told his ex-wife, who was seeking half the value of their Manhattan townhouse in a divorce.
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The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”
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Once a scene of tragedy, Georgia's 200-year-old Indian Spring Hotel now offers a venue for learning about the past – including the controversial Creek leader who built it.
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In the 1880s, the daring American journalist George Kennan first revealed the horrors of the tsar’s system of Siberian prisons, where the regime sent dissidents who favored democratic reform in Russia.
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Two hundred years ago, the conflict in which the U.S. seized the Deep South from its Native inhabitants was a turning point in American history, but it is largely forgotten today.
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Sixty years ago, Jack Ruby shot Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. What was his motive? The Warren Commission lawyer who investigated Ruby reveals the killer’s state of mind.
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Though it was one of his most controversial actions as president, Richard Nixon's covert bombing of Cambodia was excluded from his impeachment articles, helping to shape how the Vietnam War has been remembered ever since.
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In “the cradle of the American Revolution,” loyalists to the Crown faced a harsh choice: live with terrible abuse where they were, or flee to friendlier, but alien regions.
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Many historians and the author of a recent book have seriously misjudged the influential former vice president and cabinet secretary.
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