When the Civil War began with the Confederacy firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, President Lincoln responded by issuing a call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to serve for 90 days. The Union responded enthusiastically to the president’s call, supplying men, arms and equipment, forming a Northern army to suppress the Southern rebellion. Then the nation waited…and waited…and waited. read more...
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), founded in 1958, has been America’s leading government agency for space exploration and scientific and aeronautics research for 53 years. The highlight of NASA’s history occurred on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 space flight successfully landed the first humans on the moon. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin thrilled Americans and the world with their two-hour walk on the moon’s surface while astronaut Michael Collins piloted the command module orbiting above the lunar explorers. read more...
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When Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on April 9, 1865, it was a clear sign the devastation of the four-year Civil War was drawing to a close. Then, five days later, the North was plunged into sorrow when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14, while the president was relaxing at Ford’s Theatre enjoying a play. Lincoln was the first U.S. president to be assassinated, and the country’s grief was augmented by an angry resolve to catch the assassin. 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. New titles are indicated by an asterisk (*). This current addition involves 55 newspapers from 28 states and the District of Columbia. A total of 8,245 issues have been added in this release! Here are the details:
Alabama
Mobile Register (Mobile). 11 issues: 1970 to 1977 read more...
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Part of President Abraham Lincoln’s enduring legacy is the reputation he earned as a gifted orator. He is the president who delivered two of the greatest speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Address, and his second inaugural address. These are speeches that are familiar to many Americans, and both are inscribed on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. read more...
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It was one of the worst examples in American history of paranoia run amok. During the early 1950s U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined the careers and lives of many decent, loyal Americans by investigating them on bogus charges of supporting the Communist Party and being enemies of the United States. He had Americans convinced there were communists in the federal government and the Army, lurking around every corner and hiding behind every door. The end to his reign of terror began on June 9, 1954, when a special counsel to the U.S. read more...
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On June 2, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. As with most things having to do with white society, the federal government, and Native Americans, the act was controversial. Supporters praised the brave fighting many Indians performed for the United States during World War I, and pointed out that by 1924 over two-thirds of all Native Americans had gained citizenship already. read more...
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NewsInHistory is continually adding more content to our historical newspaper archive—titles new to our collection as well as expanding the date ranges and number of issues for titles already in our archive. New titles are indicated by an asterisk (*). This current addition involves 40 newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia. A total of 5,555 issues have been added in this release! Here are the details:
Alabama
Mobile Register (Mobile). 6 issues: 1984 to 1985 read more...
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On May 26, 1830, Congress passed one of the most infamous pieces of legislation in American history: the Indian Removal Act, designed to kick the “Five Civilized Tribes” out of their ancestral lands in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. President Andrew Jackson, who had urged Congress to pass a removal act in an 1829 speech, signed the act into law two days after Congress passed it, on May 28. read more...
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On May 25, 1925, a thirteen-member grand jury in Rhea County, Tennessee, indicted science teacher John Thomas Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution to his high school biology class. This legal action set in motion one of the most notorious trials of the 20th century, one famously nicknamed the Scopes “Monkey Trial” by the Baltimore Sun’s acerbic journalist, H. L. Mencken. Newspapers across the nation closely followed Scopes’s trial, and thousands of Americans tuned in to hear the first trial in the United States broadcast on national radio. 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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