During the 400-year armed conflict between whites and Native Americans, only one Indian chief ever won a major war against the United States: Lakota Chief Red Cloud, whose two-year fight (1866-1868) in Wyoming and Montana Territories is known as “Red Cloud’s War.” He and his people—along with the Northern Cheyenne and some Arapaho—were defending their lands in the Powder River Country, where soldiers had erected forts and pioneers were travelling on the Bozeman Trail. In 1868 the U.S. conceded defeat and signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. read more...
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When most people think of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Apollo missions to the moon, they think of Apollo 11—which, on July 20, 1969, 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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During the last seven weeks of 1861, the Confederacy almost got what it wished for: a war between England and the United States that would lift the Union blockade of Southern ports. The trouble began when the U.S. warship San Jacinto abducted four Confederate officials from the English mail steamer Trent, despite the men being under the protection of the British flag. read more...
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When South Carolina became the first of the future Confederate States of America to secede from the Union, on Dec. 20, 1860, few were surprised. Secessionist talk had been heating up in South Carolina for months, and the nation had been lurching toward division ever since the Compromise of 1850 only partially checked the momentum leading to civil war. Slavery and states’ rights were two irreconcilable differences dividing North and South. read more...
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Many newspapers in the 1840s printed glowing reports about the rich and abundant land awaiting pioneers at the end of the Oregon Trail. Part of the reason for encouraging this migration was to fulfill America’s “manifest destiny” and kick the British out of the Oregon Country. Not all the accounts of the Oregon Trail were positive, however; occasionally a paper presented a far darker side to the story. read more...
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The Battle of Fredericksburg was a crushing defeat for the Union army and a bitter disappointment for President Abraham Lincoln, whose newly-appointed commander, General Ambrose E. Burnside, had failed him. The five-day battle’s climax occurred on Dec. 13, 1862, when the Union army made 14 heroic and futile charges uphill against General Robert E. Lee’s army entrenched behind earthworks and stone walls. The charging Northern soldiers were devastated by concentrated artillery and rifle fire from their well-protected foe. read more...
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It is sometimes said that the publication of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas on Dec. 19, 1843, invented our modern celebration of Christmas. This is an exaggeration, but there is no denying that Dickens’s enduring Christmas tale has had great influence on Christmas as we know it today. His story was an instant critical success in 1843 and has remained popular ever since, having never gone out of print. read more...
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The five-day Battle of Fredericksburg ended Dec. 15, 1862, a crushing defeat for the Union army and a dismal end to a year that had begun so brightly for the North. Despite having superior numbers and far better equipment and supplies, the Union army had once again been defeated in Virginia by Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his smaller yet determined army. When word reached the North that Union General Ambrose E. read more...
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It was a cold, windy day on Dec. 17, 1903, when five people on the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, N.C., witnessed Orville and Wilbur Wright make aviation history: the first successful flight of a powered aircraft with fixed wings—the first real airplane. The brothers each made two flights that day, with Wilbur’s final flight the most successful, covering 852 feet and lasting 59 seconds. It is not much by today’s standards, but in 1903 it represented a historic first. read more...
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They said it could not be done, and the official history of the island prison says it never was done: no one ever escaped from Alcatraz Island during the 29 years (1934-63) it was a federal penitentiary. It was not just the lookout towers, the armed guards with orders to shoot to kill, the high walls, iron bars, or steep cliffs that dropped straight into San Francisco Bay. No, what made Alcatraz “escape-proof” was the bay itself: cold, choppy water with strong currents and rip-tides that made the 1.5-mile swim to the shore impossible. 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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