Erin Blakemore
Erin Blakemore is a journalist from Boulder, Colorado. She has been a regular contributor to History.com since 2017. Her work has appeared in outlets like The Washington Post, National Geographic, The Atlantic, TIME, Smithsonian and more. Her book, The Heroine's Bookshelf (Harper), won the Colorado Book Award for nonfiction. Learn more about Erin and her work at erinblakemore.com
Articles From This Author
Why America's Deadliest Wildfire Was Largely Forgotten
On the night of October 8, 1871, women snatched their children from their beds, men formed ad hoc fire brigades, and the terrified residents of Peshtigo, Wisconsin fled what would become the deadliest wildfire in American history. So why did the Peshtigo wildfire fade from ...read more
What Was It Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad?
Velvet cushions and gilt-framed mirrors. Feasts of antelope, trout, berries and Champagne. In 1869, a New York Times reporter experienced the ultimate in luxury—and he did so not in the parlor of a Gilded Age magnate, but on a train headed from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, ...read more
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Dies at 87
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a groundbreaking attorney, a lifelong advocate for gender equality, and a civil servant who served as a justice on the Supreme Court for 27 years, died September 18, 2020 due to complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old. Her death ...read more
The New Deal Program that Sent Women to Summer Camp
During the Great Depression, thousands of unemployed men picked up saws and axes and headed to the woods to serve in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that employed about 3 million men. But men in the CCC weren’t the only ones to take to the great outdoors on ...read more
Why Congress Passed the Defense Production Act in 1950
“Are YOU doing all you can?” “We can do it!” During World War II, Americans at home were reminded to do their part by splashy propaganda posters that emphasized pulling together for the national good. Industry did its part, too, thanks to wartime laws that prioritized military ...read more
How Medgar Evers’ Widow Fought 30 Years for His Killer’s Conviction
When Myrlie Evers was told in 1989 that new information in her late husband’s decades-old murder case was unlikely to move the gears of justice, she did not react in anger. Instead, the widow of slain civil rights movement hero Medgar Evers listened carefully as Mississippi ...read more
The Shocking Liberation of Auschwitz: Soviets ‘Knew Nothing’ as They Approached
Eighty-eight pounds of eyeglasses. Hundreds of prosthetic limbs. Twelve thousand pots and pans. Forty-four thousand pairs of shoes. When Soviet soldiers poured into Auschwitz in January 1945, they encountered warehouses filled with massive quantities of other people’s belongings. ...read more
U.S.-Iran Tensions: From Political Coup to Hostage Crisis to Drone Strikes
The United States and Iran have never formally been at war, but tensions between the two countries have persisted for decades. Below is an overview of the long-running conflict between Iran and the United States—and measures taken (economic and otherwise) in the wake of flare ...read more
Elections in Colonial America Were Huge, Booze-Fueled Parties
Voters for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758 had their choice of candidates. And one of them—a wealthy planter who had made his name in the French and Indian War—gave them their choice of alcohol, too. Candidate George Washington plied potential voters with 47 gallons of ...read more
All the Ways People Escaped Across the Berlin Wall
Ida Siekmann had been holed up for days. Nine days earlier, workers had sealed the border to her country by dead of night. Three days earlier, the front entrance to her apartment had been blocked off by police. She had committed no crime, but Siekmann was in the wrong place at ...read more
When Native Americans Briefly Won Back Their Land
They came from near and far: Native American chiefs and representatives of various tribes bearing gifts for a historic meeting. Their destination was Fort Niagara in New York, where dozens of Nations would meet to negotiate a new alliance with the British. Months earlier, in ...read more
This Mexican American Teenager Spent Years in a Japanese Internment Camp—On Purpose
The station was filled with worried faces and hushed voices. Soon, those who gathered there would leave their lives and livelihoods behind as prisoners of the prison camps where over 110,000 people of Japanese descent—most American citizens—would be incarcerated for the duration ...read more
The Election of One of the First Latino Congressmen Was Contested—Twice
When Romualdo Pacheco walked up to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1877, he’d already served in nearly every government capacity in the still-new state of California. Now, the charismatic politician had broken another barrier as one of the first-ever Latino Congressman. ...read more
Why the 'Radical' Brady Bunch Almost Never Got Made
It’s been burned into generations of brains: the story of a lovely lady and a man named Brady whose marriage creates a blended family of eight (not counting Alice, Tiger or Cousin Oliver). Today, The Brady Bunch is viewed as classic, family-friendly entertainment—not scandalous ...read more
Why the Great Steel Strike of 1919 Was One of Labor’s Biggest Failures
Mike Connolly had a dream: an eight-hour day. A Pennsylvania steel worker for 41 years, he toiled for 12 or more hours a day behind the locked doors of a steel mill with no days off and little hope for the future. If he worked eight hours a day, he imagined, “I could have a ...read more
The 1936 Sit-Down Strike That Brought a Powerful Automaker to its Knees
The General Motors body plant in Flint, Michigan was usually a thankless place, filled with loud sounds and the feverish, dangerous work of turning metal into auto bodies. But in January 1937, the sounds of whistling and conversation filled the air. Instead of toiling over ...read more
The Thorny History of Reparations in the United States
The papers were handed out one by one to the elderly recipients—most frail, some in wheelchairs. To some, it may have looked like a run-of-the-mill governmental ceremony with the usual federal fanfare. But to Norman Mineta, a California congressman and future Secretary of ...read more
After Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Spent Three Years Under Martial Law
The night of December 7, 1941 was a panicked one in Hawaii. In the wake of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian civilians struggled to understand what had just happened—and to make sense of the announcement that their island was now under martial law. As military ...read more
How Towns Around Woodstock Pushed to Cancel the Hippie Takeover
Joseph G. Owen wasn’t exactly the target market for the Woodstock festival. But when he saw a sign advertising “3 Days of Peace & Music” while on vacation in Florida, he packed his bags and headed to New York. Owen didn’t want to attend the festival—he wanted to stop it. The ...read more
How Fear of a WWII Invasion Gave Rise to Smokey Bear
“Remember Pearl Harbor!” “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships.” Those are among the most famous slogans of World War II. But another poster child birthed during the war—Smokey Bear—might be even better remembered. The ad campaign that spawned the cartoonish bear, and a fire prevention ...read more
Why America’s First Colonial Rebels Burned Jamestown to the Ground
Jamestown had once been the bustling capital of the Colony of Virginia. Now it was a smoldering ruin, and Nathaniel Bacon was on the run. Charismatic and courageous, he had spent the last several months leading a growing group of rebels in a bloody battle against William ...read more
How Anne Frank’s Private Diary Became an International Sensation
Usually, the upper floors of the office building at 263 Prinsengracht were silent. But on August 4, 1944, they came to terrible life. Miep Gies never forgot the sounds. “I could hear the sounds of our friends’ feet,” she wrote in her 1988 memoir. “I could tell from their ...read more
Why Thomas Jefferson Rewrote the Bible Without Jesus' Miracles and Resurrection
The ex-president bent over the book, using a razor and scissors to carefully cut out small squares of text. Soon, the book’s words would live in their own book, hand bound in red leather and ready to be read in private moments of contemplation. Each cut had a purpose, and each ...read more
WWI Soldiers Held their Own Olympics After the War
The packed stadium roared as Solomon “Sol” Butler, an American athlete cleared the high jump bar. He had just set a U.S. long jump record. But Butler wasn’t just there as an athlete, and the world-class sporting competition wasn’t the Olympics. It was the Inter-Allied Games of ...read more
During the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses Grant Began Expelling Southern Jews—Until Lincoln Stepped In
The 1862 letter was short, but its meaning was clear—and devastating. “You are hereby ordered to leave the city of Paducah, Kentucky, within twenty-four hours,” it read. Cesar Kaskel couldn’t believe it. He had emigrated to the United States after leaving Prussia, where he was ...read more
How John Paul Stevens' Views Evolved Over 34 Years on the Supreme Court
When John Paul Stevens was nominated to the Supreme Court in the 1970s, he steeled himself for a bombshell from his past as a Seventh Circuit judge. There, he’d authored a dissent that claimed it was legal to prevent married women from becoming flight attendants at United ...read more
The Spy Who Kept the Cold War From Boiling Over
In 1984, U.S. spies monitoring the Soviet press found an alarming piece in a Russian magazine. It wasn’t an expose on officials in the Soviet Union or a worrying account about Cold War attitudes toward the United States. Rather, it was a recipe for coot, a small water bird that’s ...read more
Why the Nazis Were Obsessed With Twins
“Twins! Twins!” Ten-year-old Eva Mozes clung to her mother amidst the chaos of the selection platform at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Before arriving at the death camp, she had been stuffed into a train car on a seemingly endless journey from Hungary. Now, she and her twin sister Miriam ...read more
Why Kaiser Wilhelm Was Never Tried for Starting World War I
The accusations were explosive: a head of state had not only begun an illegal war, but egged his troops on to a series of horrific atrocities that left thousands dead and an entire continent in ruins. By then, the accused was one of history’s most hated and debated figures, a ...read more
Germany's World War I Debt Was So Crushing It Took 92 Years to Pay Off
At the end of World War I, Germans could hardly recognize their country. Up to 3 million Germans, including 15 percent of its men, had been killed. Germany had been forced to become a republic instead of a monarchy, and its citizens were humiliated by their nation’s bitter loss. ...read more
How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans
When Eugene Burnett saw the neat tract houses of Levittown, New York, he knew he wanted to buy one. It was 1949, and he was ready to settle down in a larger home with his family. The newly established Long Island suburb seemed like the perfect place to begin their postwar ...read more
California Slaughtered 16,000 Native Americans. The State Finally Apologized For the Genocide
Enslavement. Exploitation. Discrimination. Violence. Forced removal. Genocide. Despite inhabiting California for thousands of years, Native Americans faced all of this and more at the hands of California’s white settlers and the state’s government itself. Now, California ...read more
Tycoon John D. Rockefeller Couldn't Hide His Father's Con Man Past
When he was a child, John D. Rockefeller watched his father count his money—huge wads of which he refused to keep in a bank and lovingly stacked in front of his impressionable son. “He made a practice of never carrying less than $1,000,” the oil baron recalled later in life, “and ...read more
The First Nonstop Flight Across the Atlantic Lasted 16 Harrowing Hours
When it was all over, Captain John Alcock, an English pilot, telegraphed his story to newspaper reporters around the world. He was exhausted by a recent in-air ordeal that had culminated in a risky plane crash in Ireland along with his navigator and flying partner, Arthur Whitten ...read more
Stonewall Riots Apology: NYPD Commissioner Says 1969 Police Raids Were 'Wrong'
Police crowded the Stonewall Inn, beating the bar’s patrons with nightsticks and brandishing their guns. In 1969, it was common practice for police officers in New York and other cities to harass owners and patrons of bars that they suspected of providing safe harbor for gay ...read more
A Ship of Jewish Refugees Was Refused US Landing in 1939. This Was Their Fate
As the M.S. St. Louis cruised off the coast of Miami in June 1939, its passengers could see the lights of the city glimmering. But the United States hadn’t been on the ship’s original itinerary, and its passengers didn’t have permission to disembark in Florida. As the more than ...read more
How a Sentimental Yiddish Song Became a Worldwide Hit—and a Nazi Target
Sophie Tucker was best known for her sexy songs—crowd-pleasers that showed off her curves, her sass, and her frank love of men and money. But when the singer took to the stage in 1925, something else was on her mind: her mother. That night, Tucker debuted a new song. Instead of ...read more
One of the Last Navajo Code Talkers, Whose Native Tongue Stumped WWII Enemies, Has Died
Fleming Begaye Sr., a Navajo code talker who helped the Allies gain victory in the Pacific Theater in World War II, died on May 10, 2019 at the age of 97. He was one of the last remaining members of an elite group of Navajo people who used their language to help transmit ...read more
Chinese Americans Were Once Forbidden to Testify in Court. A Murder Changed That
Yee Shun was new to Las Vegas, in New Mexico Territory, and he didn’t intend to stay long. Though he’d secured a job at a local hotel, he’d decided to move on to Albuquerque, a frontier city even more promising and bustling than 1882 Las Vegas. But first, he planned to look up a ...read more
The Daring Israeli Spy Operation to Capture Nazi Mass Murderer Adolf Eichmann
“Un momentito, Señor.” They were the only three words Israeli intelligence Peter Malkin knew in Spanish, but they were about to change the course of history. Malkin uttered the words to a balding Mercedes-Benz factory worker headed home from work on May 11, 1960. And when the ...read more
These Japanese American Linguists Became America's Secret Weapon During WWII
In February 1942, a small group of members of a top-secret military language school defied orders. They slipped out of their headquarters in San Francisco and snuck toward their destination, a nearby racetrack. They weren’t there to gamble: They were there to visit their ...read more
The Secret Cold War Program That Airlifted Cuban Kids to the U.S.—Without Their Parents
“What are you doing here?” The social worker peered at Carlos Eire, shocked to find the Cuban 12-year-old in a home for delinquent boys in Miami, Florida. “You’re supposed to be with your uncle.” By 1963, the preteen had been living in the foster home for months, accompanied by ...read more
The Harsh Reality of Life Under Apartheid in South Africa
From 1948 through the 1990s, a single word dominated life in South Africa. Apartheid—Afrikaans for “apartness”—kept the country’s majority Black population under the thumb of a small white minority. It would take decades of struggle to stop the policy, which affected every facet ...read more
America Flirted with Legalized Prostitution During the Civil War
In July 1863, a riverboat bearing important cargo sailed into Louisville on the Ohio River. It was a shipment from the Union Army—not unusual in the days of the army’s occupation of the Kentucky city during the Civil War. But the Idahoe’s cargo was anything but ordinary, and the ...read more
The Shocking River Fire That Fueled the Creation of the EPA
Fires were nothing out of the ordinary on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River in the 1960s. The city was still a manufacturing hub and the river, which empties into Lake Erie, had long been a dumping place for sewage and industrial waste. But on June 22, 1969, a spark flared from the ...read more
The Insane 1930s Graft Investigation That Took Down New York's Mayor
To the naked eye, it was nothing more than a case of simple prostitution: When the police officer burst into Vivian Gordon’s New York hotel room in 1923, he found her in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. Believing her lover had paid her for sex, the police officer hauled her ...read more
The Notre-Dame Cathedral Was Nearly Destroyed During the French Revolution
It’s one of France’s most powerful religious, architectural and cultural symbols—and images of Notre-Dame de Paris in flames evoke questions about how the city, and the cathedral, will move forward. But the fire isn’t the first time the cathedral has faced destruction. During ...read more
The Deadliest Tornado in U.S. History Blindsided the Midwest in 1925
Overturned trains. Timber found miles away from where it had been stored. Trees felled. Fires and close calls. A letter that flew almost 100 miles. On a normal day in the Midwest in 1925, any one of these stories would have been worthy of front-page coverage. But March 18, 1925 ...read more
The Rigged Quiz Shows That Gave Birth to 'Jeopardy!'
A 55-year-old show that commands 23 million viewers and is the top-rated game show in history. The answer is: “What is Jeopardy!?” In 1964, the answers-first show made its debut. But if not for a group of popular—and fraudulent—quiz shows, it may never have existed in the first ...read more
How the Three Mile Island Accident Was Made Even Worse By a Chaotic Response
For tellers at a Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania bank, the final days of March 1979 should have felt like business as usual. Instead, they were sheer chaos: customers piled up, trying to withdraw money in the days before ATMs. “Customers were stopping by with their cars packed up to ...read more