It's one of the oldest folk ballads in our national songbook, but where did it come from? The answer is complex, multi-layered, American.
Before Saturday Night Live, there was "Your Show of Shows."
Many of our first food-safety laws arose after healthy young volunteers became sick when they tried commercial foods containing toxic additives.
Few roads were even paved when Alice Ramsey and three friends became the first women to drive coast to coast in 1909.
One hundred years ago this month, the “House That Ruth Built” became the first true baseball stadium.
The surprise U.S. victory over England in 1950 proved that Americans could also play the beautiful game.
Fighting for labor rights in California's Central Valley, Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta took up la causa in the name of children.
Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.
It's one of the oldest folk ballads in our national songbook, but where did it come from? The answer is complex, multi-layered, American.
Written while he was jailed for leading nonviolent demonstrations, King's open letter defined the Civil Rights movement.
A founder of the Algonquin Round Table and frequent writer for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, Benchley influenced generations of humorists, from James Thurber to Dave Barry
The Museum of Appalachia celebrates simple, honest life in late 19th-century Tennessee.
J.D. Salinger carried a draft of his subsequently classic novel with him when he landed on the beach at Normandy.
The answer is complex, confusing, American.
FDR's Secretary of Labor — the first female Cabinet member — also helped create the minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, and the first tough child labor laws.
“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” said Abraham Lincoln.
The force behind the early education and social movements—American curiosity—still lives on today.
Every country has mail, but only in America is the daily mail part-ritual, part-Constitutional mandate.
What the future president learned during a coast-to-coast military motor expedition would later transform America.
As General Granger read the announcement in the summer of 1865 that slavery had ended, the celebration began. The date would go down in history — June 19th, soon shortened to Juneteenth.
Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the first in Congress to stand up to the bullying of Joe McCarthy.
The annual Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, is a week-long binge of festive dress, radical inclusion, and pyrotechnic display that has become a spiritual phenomenon.
In what many consider the greatest anti-slavery oration ever given, Frederick Douglass called for “the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
In history’s long parade of military heroes, few can rival Sergeant Alvin C. York.
After assassinating President Garfield, a lunatic gunman mounted an insanity defense, which the jury--and the nation--rejected, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.
Although marred by the grisly murders of three young activists, the Freedom Summer of 1964 brought revolutionary changes to Mississippi and the nation.
