Amanda Onion
Articles From This Author
How Greg Louganis' Olympic Diving Accident Forced a Conversation About AIDS
Greg Louganis knew something was off as soon as his feet left the springboard. It was September 19, 1988, and the U.S. diver who had won two golds at the previous Olympics, was competing in the preliminaries at the Seoul Olympic Games. He later recounted to ABC’s Barbara Walters ...read more
September 11: Six Ways Uncertainty Reigned Aboard Air Force One
On 9/11, millions of Americans became glued to their televisions, watching in horror as hijacked planes attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But there was one critical group of people who, for a time, received only snippets of information—and misinformation—as the ...read more
Was Germany Doomed in World War I by the Schlieffen Plan?
The Schlieffen Plan, devised a decade before the start of World War I, outlined a strategy for Germany to avoid fighting at its eastern and western fronts simultaneously. But what had been meticulously designed to deal a swift “right hook” attack on France and then advance on ...read more
Why Was the Battle of the Somme So Deadly?
The Battle of the Somme was one of the largest battles of World War I, and among the bloodiest in all of human history. A combination of a compact battlefield, destructive modern weaponry and several failures by British military leaders led to the unprecedented slaughter of wave ...read more
How World War I Changed Literature
World War I, the war that was originally expected to be “over by Christmas,” dragged on for four years with a grim brutality brought on by the dawn of trench warfare and advanced weapons, including chemical weapons. The horrors of that conflict altered the world for decades—and ...read more
How the Great Compromise and the Electoral College Affects Politics Today
The Great Compromise was forged in a heated dispute during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: States with larger populations wanted congressional representation based on population, while smaller states demanded equal representation. To keep the convention from dissolving into ...read more