American History Events

The Nauvoo Legion. Joseph was determined that the Saints should never again be at the mercy of their enemies as they had been in Missouri, which is why he made sure that the Nauvoo charte...

In 1841 Barnum bought Scudder’s American Museum located across from St. Paul’s on the southeast corner of Broadway and Ann Street. He transformed the five-story exterior into a giant, gau...

Visiting his home state of Connecticut on a cold November night in 1842, the great showman Phineas T. Barnum thought to track down an amazingly small child he had heard about. The boy, Ch...

The first Mormon to seek the White House was also the first Mormon -- Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of the Mormon Church, whose 1844 presidential campaign is historically notable not only...

On June 7, 1844, William Law, a disaffected Mormon, published the first and only edition of the Nauvoo Expositor. It described in lurid prose all the evil things Joseph and other leaders ...

In the History of the Church the following account is given concerning Joseph Smith's death: 'Immediately there was a little rustling at the outer door of the jail, and a cry of surren...

Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., has been bringing its readers unique insights about developments in science and technology for more than 160 y...

The major financial catalyst for the panic of 1857 was the August 24, 1857, failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. It was soon reported that the enti...

SENATOR DOUGLAS’ SPEECH. Long and loud bursts of applause greeted Senator Douglas when he appeared on the stand. As he was about to commence speaking, he was interrupted by Dr. Hope, o...

Denver City was founded in November 1858 as a mining town during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in western Kansas Territory. That summer, a group of gold prospectors from Lawrence, Kansas, arri...

The infamous Western outlaw known as "Billy the Kid" is born in a poor Irish neighborhood on New York City's East Side. Before he was shot dead at age 21, Billy reputedly killed 27 people...

Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins from Siam (now Thailand), came to the U.S. in 1829 and toured the nation and the world over the next four decades. Born in 1811 of Chinese parents, t...

William Henry Johnson was born to a very poor African-American family. His parents were William and Mahalia Johnson, former slaves. As he grew his body developed normally but his head rem...

"The mystic chords of memory . . . will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." —Abraham Lincoln

On April 11, Beauregard sent three aides, Colonel James Chesnut, Jr., Captain Stephen D. Lee, and Lieutenant A. R. Chisolm to demand the surrender of the fort. Anderson declined, and the ...

Anna Haining Bates, born Anna Haining Swan (August 6, 1846 – August 5, 1888), was a Canadian from Mill Brook, New Annan, (near present-day Tatamagouche), Colchester County, Nova Scotia, f...

When Nutt was 17 years old he was brought to New York City to be exhibited at Barnum's American Museum that stood at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street. The museum, owned by P.T. Barnu...

Though a Democrat for years, Barnum eventually broke from his party -- and declined its invitation to run for the state's governor -- because of the party's pro-slavery stance. He eventua...

Music has ceased forever in Scudder's balcony, not because of rain but of fire. When Barnum's Museum burned, a few days since, one of the few interesting, and from Halleck's lines we may ...

The Giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument with a fundamentalist minister named Mr. Turk about...

Barnum did not enter the circus business until late in his career (he was 61). In Delavan, Wisconsin in 1871 with William Cameron Coup, he established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Muse...

On December 4, 1875, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, notorious leader of New York City's Democratic political machine, escaped from prison and fled to Europe. Between 1865 and 1871, Boss Twee...

The ABA was founded on August 21,1878, in Saratoga Springs, New York, by 100 lawyers from 21 states. The legal profession as we know it today barely existed at that time. Lawyers were gen...

When the first commercial telephone exchange began service in January 1878, teenage boys were hired as the first operators. However, the young men often played pranks on each other and th...

Less than four months after his inauguration, President Garfield arrived at the Washington railroad depot on July 2, 1881, to catch a train for a summer's retreat on the New Jersey seasho...

On this day in 1881, Chester Arthur is inaugurated, becoming the third person to serve as president in that year. The year 1881 began with Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in office. Hay...

"I have nothing to declare except my genius." —Oscar Wilde, upon arriving in the United States of America

Eliot was born into the Eliot family, a bourgeois family, originally from New England, who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful bus...

One of the requests made by Mr. Barnum was that, when all hope was gone, sedatives which would make his passage to the next world more peaceful be administered. About 4 o'clock this morni...

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850-1...

In August 1896, three people led by Keish (Skookum Jim Mason), a member of the Tagish First Nations, headed north, down the Yukon River from the Carcross area, looking for his sister Kate...

The shooting continued for at least a minute and a half, though some eyewitnesses claimed it may have been three minutes or more. Perhaps as many as 150 shots were fired. The magazines in...

The editorial was the New York Sun’s lyrical and timeless paean to childhood and the Christmas spirit, “Is There A Santa Claus?” It was written by Francis Pharcellus Church (photo right),...

Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World ...

H. H. Bliss, a real estate dealer, with offices at 41 Wall Street, and living at 235 West Seventy-fifth Street, was run over last night at Central Park West and Seventy-fourth Street. He ...

Murrow was born Egbert Roscoe Murrow near Greensboro, in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of Roscoe C. Murrow and Ethel F. (née Lamb) Murrow. His parents were Quakers. He was the ...

Realizing the specialized nature of national park work and the desirability of unifying the parks into one integrated system, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane in 1915 induced th...

United States Adopts a Policy of "Armed Neutrality," Germans Sink 7,000 Vessels Germany, with feverish speed, had been multiplying her fleets of submarines, with the secret intention o...

The Germans, while continuing to sink defenceless American vessels, still moved with a degree of caution after the severance of diplomatic relations. True, they had sunk the American frei...

Gentlemen of the Congress: I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it ...

DECLARATION OF WAR Public Resolution No. 1 S. J. Res. 1 65th Congress Sixty-fifth Congress of the United States of America; At the First Session, Begun and Held at the City of Wash...

Hemingway first went to Paris upon reaching Europe, then traveled to Milan in early June after receiving his orders. The day he arrived, a munitions factory exploded and he had to carry m...

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles...

Roosevelt was considering a third Presidential campaign in 1920, and was believed to have been the front-runner for the Republican nomination until he was laid low by illness. His family ...

The Ringlings purchased the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1907 and ran the circuses separately until 1919. By that time, Charles Edward Ringling and John Nicholas Ringling were the only remai...

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. " —19th Amendment

The Scripps family founded 8MK, which claims that on Aug. 20, 1920, it 'became the first radio station in the world to broadcast regularly scheduled programs.' According to this claim the...

The first rigid airship to be designed and built by the United States Navy, Shenandoah was designed by the Bureau of Aeronautics; fabricated at the Naval Aircraft Factory, Philadelphia; a...

In 1926, he enrolled at Washington State College, now Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington, eventually majoring in speech. A member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity, Murrow wa...

Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, near Marion, Alabama. She spent her childhood on her parents' farm in Heiberger. The farm had been in the family since the Civil War, ...