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Jan 15, 1492
Columbus Discovers America
The "Columbian Exchange"—a phrase coined by historian Alfred Crosby—describes the interchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the Americas following Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean in 1492.
Explanation
The Columbian Exchange explains why Indian nations collapsed and European colonies thrived after Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. -
Pilgrims
It was a dramatic historical moment. A community of devoutly religious Christians traveled across the ocean to a relatively unknown land, radically different from the society they left behind. For these travelers, who called themselves Pilgrims, the journey took on spiritual as well as physical significance. If you are from the South, the history of New England can show you how those late-comers (compared to the Chesapeake settlers) differed from the people who settled your part of the country. -
King Phillip's War
Colonial New England underwent a rapid series of changes in the century that passed between its worst armed conflict with local Indians, known as Metacom's or King Philip's War, and the American Revolution.
Explanation
look at aspects of society in colonial New England and found a story with myriad implications for their own generations. -
Reasons For American Revolution
The origins of the political philosophies and governmental theories that underlay the American Revolution stretched back across centuries. Generations of intellectual theory, political philosophy and scientific empiricism all culminated in the Revolutionary War.
Explanation
It is where we come from. If you're an immigrant or come from a family of immigrants, then this is supposed to help you understand what this country is all about and why it is so great. -
History Of Journalism
The newspaper is one of our most revered cultural institutions—but its history has been one of change and adaptation. Today, with the rise of the internet, we stand on the brink of another revolution in the delivery of news.
Explanation
It is now hard to imagine navigating our world without the internet—but just twenty years ago people could not imagine getting along without a newspaper. -
American Revolution
The American Revolution began as a transatlantic dispute over parliamentary authority and policy, as American colonists chafed against British measures to reconsolidate their hold over their North American empire.
Explanation
If you don't already recognize the importance of the American Revolution, chances are you won't be able to understand or appreciate most of what follows in American history. -
U.S. Constitution
The making of the U.S. Constitution is perhaps one of the most crucial lessons in the powers of hindsight and the importance of contextualizing history.
Explanation
The framers of the Constitution had no idea that their experiment would work, that the document they drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. -
Federalists
With the ratification of the Constitution, the United States celebrated a new political beginning. Yet while most Americans were optimistic, great challenges still lay ahead: national and state debts, a stagnant economy.
Explanation
Americans still celebrate George Washington as the father of the country, but the nation that began to take shape during his presidency was not the one he had in mind. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Haitian Revolution, one of the most remarkable events in human history, destroyed French Emperor Napoleon I's dreams of creating a new French Empire in North America and opened the door to the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States.
Explanation
In 1791, taking advantage of divisions among colonial rulers created by the roiling French Revolution, slaves on the French Caribbean island colony of Saint-Domingue. -
Early American Immigration
From the colonial period to 1882, immigration into the United States was essentially free and unrestricted.
Explanation
Two hundred fifty years ago, Benjamin Franklin worried that a huge wave of German-speaking immigrants then pouring into Pennsylvania would make it impossible for the colony's English settlers to preserve their language or government. -
War Of 1812
In 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain. For the previous twenty years, Britain had claimed the right to intercept American ships on the high seas, seize their cargoes, and search their crews for British navy deserters.
Explanation
For many Americans today, the War of 1812 is all but unknown. Some may remember that it gave us our national anthem; a few will recall that it ended with an unnecessary but victorious battle at New Orleans. -
Abolitionists
From the moment the United States was founded as a free and independent republic, dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal," slavery represented a fundamental contradiction to the nation's most cherished values Explanation
This is a story for activists. And idealists. And anyone who ever fought for a cause that seemed impossible to win, because the odds appeared too insurmountable and because no one seemed to listen. -
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush forever transformed Americans' idea of success. Before the Gold Rush, few Americans even aspired to achieve great wealth.
Explanation
Gold Rush fever became the American dream. The spirit of the Forty-Niners lives on with us today, from Powerball drawings to IPOs on the stock exchange. -
Civil War
The American Civil War was the most deadly and arguably the most important event in the nation's history. Sectional tensions enshrined in the Constitution erupted into a brutal war that cost over 600,000 lives and cleaved a nation in two.
Explanation
The Civil War is one of the most—if not the most—important event in the history of the United States. The American Revolution...sure, it was important. The creation of the U.S.Constitution? -
Age Of Great Inventions
Technological advances transformed America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the period known as the Gilded Age. Enterprising Americans built on the innovations of the first Industrial Revolution.
Explanation
If the Civil War violently demonstrated that the United States was one nation politically, the technology-driven events of the 1880s and 1890s would draw the nation together economically, socially, and culturally as never before. -
WW1
Between April 1917 and November 1918, over two million Americans fought in the biggest and most costly war in European history to that date. Entering only at the tail end of four years of slaughter and horror, the United States helped turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies.
Explanation
The United States stayed out of the war for almost three years before finally throwing its hat into the ring in April 1917. By the end of the war on 11 November 1918. -
History Of The NFL
Professional football is today the most popular sport in America and the National Football League is the most valuable and profitable sports business in the world. The league sold more than 17 million game tickets in 2008.
Explanation
If you're like most Americans, you probably have a favorite NFL team. You probably watch games on TV and if you live in a city with an NFL team, you may well shell out for spendy game tickets to cheer them on live. -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was the worst collapse in the history of American capitalism. Throughout the 1930s, neither the free market nor the federal government was able to get the country working again.
Explanation
We Americans are, in the phrase of historian David Potter, "people of plenty." Our country is blessed with a wealth of natural resources, and our democratic capitalist system has delivered us a level of material affluence unprecedented in human history -
WW2
World War II, as our school textbooks have taught us, ushered in a new world order, bringing an end to Hitler's Third Reich, Mussolini's fascist dictatorship in Italy, and an aggressive Japanese empire in the Pacific. For the part it played in Allied victory, the United States earned a new, powerful and coveted role on the world stage.
Explanation
"The Good War." You've likely seen this phrase before in reference to World War II. -
9/11
A truly shocking blow against a nation that entered the new millennium believing itself mostly free from the threat of imminent attack, the Al Qaeda terror strike that morning left the Washington’s Pentagon mangled, New York’s World Trade Center towers destroyed, and the American people deeply, deeply shaken.
Explanation
September 11, 2001. It is – like the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack 60 years earlier – a date which will live in infamy.
