On Aug. 25, 1814, one of the most humiliating incidents in American history ended when British troops, after a 26-hour occupation, abandoned Washington, D.C.—but not before they had flown the Union Jack on top of Capitol Hill and burned all the public buildings in the young nation’s capital, including the Capitol Building (with its uncompleted rotunda), White House, and Treasury Building. The British occupation was purely a retaliatory action—Washington, D.C., held no military significance. read more...
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In the 1920s and ’30s Amelia Earhart was a genuine American heroine, with newspapers covering her every move and large, enthusiastic crowds awaiting her at each airport she landed after setting yet another record. Early in her career she achieved an impressive first: on May 16, 1923, she became the first woman to receive a pilot’s license from the distinguished National Aeronautic Association. read more...
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A great many determined women, in groups and as individuals (along with some enlightened men), worked for over 70 years to gain women the national right to vote in this country. They had to suffer many setbacks and disappointments along the way before seeing their dream become a reality. Finally, on Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the required 36th state to approve the suffrage amendment, and with that action the 19th Amendment to the U.S Constitution was ratified. read more...
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While Northern readers were consumed by stories in their newspapers about the Civil War during the summer of 1862, they were startled to suddenly find accounts of an awful massacre of white settlers in Minnesota by enraged Indians that erupted on Aug. 17, 1862. During a fearsome six-week period settlers were relentlessly pursued and killed by roving bands of Eastern Sioux (Dakota) Indians driven to desperation by the government failing to honor treaties and deliver promised food, money and goods. read more...
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The 400-year armed conflict between whites and Native Americans saw enough savagery and cruelty to shame both races, but even in this context it is hard to understand the butchery that marked the short-lived Dakota War that erupted in Minnesota on Aug. 17, 1862. During a fearsome six-week period white settlers in Minnesota were relentlessly pursued and killed by roving bands of Eastern Sioux (Dakota) Indians driven to rage by the government failing to honor treaties and deliver promised food, money and goods. read more...
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The following editorial by a Texas newspaper presents a conservative view of the bloody, destructive riots then raging in Watts, the predominantly African-American area of Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. The editorial takes a strong stand—yet in its seemingly clear position and the arguments it musters to support its point of view, it reflects the underlying uncertainty and complexity that makes it difficult to understand something as terrifying and complicated as a race riot. read more...
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For six bloody, destructive days in the summer of 1965, from Aug. 11-16, the predominantly African-American area of Watts (Los Angeles, California) was torn apart in a series of riots that left 34 people dead, over 1,000 injured and more than 3,400 arrested. It was an explosion of violence triggered by a white police officer’s arrest of a black man on suspicion of drunken driving, along with his brother and mother—but the underlying cause was the long-simmering tension caused by poverty, discrimination, and distrust of an almost all-white police force. read more...
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When President Richard M. Nixon made his nationally-televised address to the nation on Aug. 8, 1974, announcing he was resigning the presidency, the news came as a relief to an American public weary and frustrated by the Watergate scandal. The sense of relief was felt far beyond the United States, as the following international newspaper editorials reveal. These two newspaper articles, each summarizing international opinion, were printed in American papers on Aug. read more...
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When President Richard M. Nixon made his nationally-televised address to the nation on Aug. 8, 1974, announcing he was resigning the presidency, the news came as a relief to a public weary and frustrated by the Watergate scandal. For two years Nixon had denied any involvement in the scandal’s cover-up, but the Supreme Court ruled that the president had to release tapes of White House conversations he had secretly recorded. On Aug. read more...
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In an exciting two-mile rowing race on the waters of New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee on Aug. 3, 1852, Harvard’s Oneida won the first Harvard-Yale Boat Race, beginning a regatta rivalry that continues to this day. That 1852 race was the first intercollegiate athletic competition between American colleges. It was witnessed by a large crowd including General Franklin Pierce, who was elected the United States’ 14th president later that year. Pierce presented Harvard with the prized trophy: a pair of black walnut oars inscribed with silver. 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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