On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, the joint British-French enterprise which had owned and operated the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869. Nasser’s announcement came about following months… Read More ›
United States History
Helen Keller’s connection to Socialism
Helen Keller (1880–1967) is best known for her triumph over blindness, deafness, and muteness. Rescued from the isolation of her afflictions as a young girl by the Perkins Institute for the Blind teacher Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to understand a… Read More ›
Atomic Diplomacy
From Dailyhistory.org: Atomic diplomacy refers to attempts to use the threat of nuclear warfare to achieve diplomatic goals. After the first successful test of the atomic bomb in 1945, U.S. officials immediately considered the potential non-military benefits derived from the… Read More ›
Bacon’s Rebellion – What a Mess
From Dailyhistory.org: Bacon’s Rebellion was probably one of the most confusing and intriguing chapters in Jamestown’s history. For many years, historians considered the Virginia Rebellion of 1676 to be the first stirring of revolutionary sentiment in America, which culminated in… Read More ›
When Congress balked over free government cars for the Speaker of the House
From The Historian of House Blog: The first telegraphic message ever sent traveled from the U.S. Capitol building to a Baltimore train station on May 24, 1844. A year earlier Congress had given the telegraph’s inventor, Samuel Morse, $30,000 to fund… Read More ›
The Importance of the Battle of Antietam
From Dailyhistory.org: Gettysburg, perhaps the most renowned battle of the American Civil War, was the second incursion of Confederate troops onto Union soil. The first offensive in the North taken by General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern… Read More ›
Berlin Airlift
From Dailyhistory.org: At the end of the Second World War, the United States, British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. The United States, United Kingdom,… Read More ›
Why did they settle on Jamestown Island?
By Hank Mosely from the Historyisfun.org Blog: After a voyage of almost five months, the English colonists arrived at Jamestown Island on May 13, 1607. The following day, they began landing their supplies and building what became the first permanent… Read More ›
Religious Freedom and Jefferson’s Disestablishment of Virginia’s Official Religion
By Nancy D. Egloff from Historyisfun.org Blog: Public incidents in this past month provided reminders of the freedoms instituted in America’s founding documents such as freedom of the press, freedom to assemble or speak openly about one’s convictions. National Religious… Read More ›
Why did Harding win the 1920 Presidential Election?
From Dailyhistory.org: The 1920 general election featured a greatly divided country on issues ranging from race, healthcare, foreign policy, and reactions to reforms brought on by the Progressive Era. It was also the first election women could vote; however, many… Read More ›
The failure of the Treaty of Versailles
From Dailyhistory.org: The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside Paris. The conference was called to establish the terms of peace after World War I. Though nearly thirty nations participated, the representatives of the United Kingdom,… Read More ›
Reagan’s reaction to the Falklands Crisis
From Dailyhistory.org: Early on April 2, 1982, Argentine military forces landed on the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Argentina had maintained a claim to the islands dating to its independence from Spain in 1816; beginning… Read More ›
Hawaii’s path toward Statehood
From Dailyhistory.org: The state of Hawaii is the only tropical state in the United States. It is also an example of late 19th-century expansionism that saw the United States compete with other major Western powers for influence across the World… Read More ›
The failure of the 1945 Potsdam Conference
From Dailyhistory.org: The last meeting of the “Big Three” occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension that would erupt into the cold war was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the revelation of the… Read More ›
Gentrification has been around longer than you realize.
By Dennis Gale, author of The Misunderstood History of Gentrification from North Philly Notes: Gentrification—the physical, economic, and social transformation of poor and working class neighborhoods primarily by middle- and upper-income people—remains one of the most controversial topics in urban… Read More ›
How will history judge our response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Historians are already collecting the records.
By Anthony Faiola from The Washington Post: On the wooded site of a former golf course in suburban Washington, archivists are building a global time capsule of the pandemic. The digital repository — to be housed at the National Library… Read More ›
What were the different medical sects in the United States during the 19th Century?
From Dailyhistory.org: Nineteenth-century medicine was characterized by constant competition among three major medical sects: Regulars, Eclectics, and Homeopaths.[1] Each of these medical sects not only meaningfully disagreed on how to treat illnesses and diseases but sought to portray their type… Read More ›
The History of the Capitol Building
From Dailyhistory.org: Early in the United States’ history, the Capitol Building, or United States Capitol, was authorized and built in the US’s newly formed capital in Washington D.C. It was to serve as the seat of the US government’s legislative… Read More ›
Courts order Trump White House to Preserve Records
From National Security Archive and edited by Tom Blanton: The National Security Archive et. al. v. Donald J. Trump et. al. lawsuit, filed December 1, 2020 to prevent a possible bonfire of records in the Rose Garden, achieved a formal litigation hold… Read More ›
Opening Japanese Trade
From Dailyhistory.org: On July 8, 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry led his four ships into the harbor at Tokyo Bay, seeking to re-establish for the first time in over 200 years regular trade and discourse between Japan and the western… Read More ›