NewsInHistory Blog

The high seas were perilous for merchant vessels in 1807. With the Napoleonic Wars raging in Europe, three combatants—Great Britain, France and Spain—were ignoring the rights of neutrals and seizing merchant ships to disrupt one another’s commerce. Another danger came from the British practice of impressment, whereby sailors were yanked off American ships on the pretext they were British subjects and forced into service in the British Navy. read more...

South Carolina’s secession from the Union on Dec. 20, 1860, dramatized what had been clear for several years: slavery and states’ rights were two irreconcilable differences dividing North and South that would fracture the country. While the Northern press, predictably, condemned South Carolina’s action, many newspapers in the South supported this fellow slave state’s actions. Some, as in the following editorial, predicted other Southern states would soon follow South Carolina’s example. read more...

Things looked grim for the 10,000 American troops trapped in the Belgium town of Bastogne on Dec. 22, 1944. Six days before, the Germans had surprised the Allies by launching the Ardennes Offensive, known to Americans as the Battle of the Bulge because of the sudden bulge the German thrust initially made in the Allies’ lines. It had seemed the end was drawing near for Nazi Germany, especially with the huge Soviet offensive bearing down on the Eastern Front. Allied intelligence reports of German troop movements had been interpreted as purely defensive maneuvers. read more...

At dawn on Dec. 15, 1890, the life of Sitting Bull, a chief and holy man of the Hunkpapa Lakota Indians, came to an end, shot in the chest and head by Indian police who had come to arrest him. Sitting Bull was murdered by Indians sent by white men—who wanted him destroyed because they feared his waning but still powerful influence among the Lakota. read more...

For one generation, the tragedy of Nov. 22, 1963, is an indelible memory—they will always remember exactly where they were when they first heard the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated. For many people in the following generation, the date of Dec. 8, 1980, has the same impact—that awful moment when they first heard that John Lennon had been shot to death. read more...

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...

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...

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...