In the article “Who Said It First?” posted on the Slate website Aug. 30, 2010, Jack Shafer investigated who first coined the phrase “the first rough draft of history” to describe journalism. He thought it was the Washington Post’s former president and publisher, Philip L. Graham, until alerted by etymologist Barry Popik that the journalist Alan Barth used the phrase before Graham, in a 1943 book review. read more...
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When most Americans think of women aviation pioneers, they think of Amelia Earhart. But there were certainly others, such as Harriet Quimby, who in 1912 became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. One of the most impressive American women pilots was Ruth Rowland Nichols, who in the course of her flying career set more than 35 records for women’s aviation. On Dec. 1, 1930, she set one of those records when she flew across the U.S. read more...
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When Rosa Parks, an African-American woman in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her bus seat to a white person on Dec. 1, 1955, her act of resistance ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott—which in turn accelerated the Civil Rights Movement and forever changed America. It was not that Parks was too physically tired to move that evening, though it was the end of another long day working as a seamstress in the Montgomery Fair department store. Nor was she old and infirm; at 42, she was a strong and healthy woman. read more...
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NewsInHistory is continually adding more content to our historical newspapers archive—titles new to our collection as well as expanding the date ranges and number of issues for titles already in our archive. This current addition involves 29 newspapers from 16 states. A total of 3,446 issues have been added in this release! Here are the details:
Connecticut read more...
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William Magear Tweed was a larger-than-life corrupt politician, a 300-pound behemoth whose extravagant lust for power and money matched his girth. From 1858 to 1871 “Boss Tweed” controlled New York City and much of the state, using Tammany Hall (the lead committee for the local Democratic Party) as a power base to dominate the city’s political and economic life. The “Tweed Ring” had a hand in every election and business transaction, routinely rigging elections and demanding bribes and kickbacks from merchants and contractors. It was corruption on a staggering scale. read more...
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What is arguably the world’s greatest archaeological discovery, the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, did not come easily or quickly. The head archaeologist, Howard Carter, had been working for his sponsor Lord Carnarvon since 1908, and as the 1922 season began Carnarvon told Carter this would be the last season he would fund his work. Then, on Nov. 4 the steps leading down to Tutankhamen’s tomb were discovered. read more...
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In Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, one undisputed fact occurred: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife Nellie. Beyond that almost every detail is disputed, and Kennedy’s assassination remains the subject of vigorous debate, with many competing conspiracy theories. Did Lee Harvey Oswald actually kill the president, even though he denied it before Jack Ruby in turn murdered him? read more...
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After convening in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Annapolis, Maryland; Trenton, New Jersey; and New York City, Congress finally moved to its permanent location in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 17, 1800. Although the Senate wing was completed, the House wing was still under construction and in fact was not finished until 1811. This did not deter Congress, however; Washington, D.C., was the nation’s capital, the Capitol Building—finished or not—was the seat of Congress, and the U.S. Congress went ahead and held it first session on Nov. 17 as scheduled. read more...
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In what remains a shameful and controversial episode in United States military history, American soldiers on the morning of March 16, 1968, attacked the My Lai area, a series of hamlets in Vietnam, and killed anywhere from 347 to 504 villagers (estimates vary). The soldiers were looking for Viet Cong enemy, but only found unarmed, defenseless villages filled primarily with women, children and elderly people. There was absolutely no hostile fire, but the Americans started shooting anyway, killing everything they saw, people as well as livestock, and torching the homes. read more...
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In the pre-dawn darkness of Nov. 7, 1811, around 500 warriors of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh’s Indian confederation attacked a small army of 1,000 men being led by Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tecumseh had spent the past decade carefully building his Indian confederation to fight back against white encroachment on Native American lands, but the charismatic leader was away the day of the great battle. read more...
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I understand that when writing a blog, it’s necessary to show a picture and say a few words about yourself, so that people don’t think a nameless, faceless committee or advisory board is running the show. Here I am, a real person. My name is Tony Pettinato, and I live in Deerfield, Mass. I did my undergraduate studies in English at Oberlin College, my graduate work in Journalism at UC Berkeley, and have been a reporter for six newspapers. For the past fourteen years I have worked at NewsBank, six of those as a managing editor for the U.S. Congressional Serial Set project – NewsBank’s acclaimed effort that digitized and indexed twelve million pages of primary source documents – that gratified my lifelong interest in American history. And that led me to editing this history blog!
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