In November 1945, just a few months after atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, U.S. military leaders began planning additional nuclear weapons tests. The first location that they picked to stage a blast was a ...read more

Executive orders aren’t mentioned once in the U.S. Constitution, but presidents starting with George Washington have used executive orders and proclamations in order to bypass Congress and quickly exercise the independent power of their office. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the ...read more

Theodore Roosevelt is known as the “conservation president” for his undaunted efforts, at the dawn of the 20th century, to shield wildlife and public lands from development. His efforts helped establish America’s national park and forestry services, putting more than 200 million ...read more

As advisor to President John F. Kennedy, then national security advisor (1969-75) and secretary of state (1973-77) to President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger was responsible for making major decisions related to the Vietnam War. He kept the U.S. bombing of Cambodia a secret from ...read more

Madame Stephanie St. Clair was a Harlem entrepreneur with a head for numbers and a skill for minting cash—even during the Great Depression. But like most African Americans in the early 20th century, she found herself barred from traditional, white-dominated financial businesses ...read more

When the Supreme Court of the United States agrees to hear a case, the only part of the process that’s open to the public are the oral arguments. The rest of the deliberations happen behind closed doors between the nine justices and their teams of law clerks. So how exactly do ...read more

More than 60 years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, Hawaii (Native spelling: Hawaiʻi) officially became America’s 50th state on August 21, 1959. The cluster of islands, situated some 2,400 miles off the U.S. mainland in the South Pacific, followed Alaska, the 49th ...read more

When Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley as president in 1901, he was aware that America was in a different international position than it had been just a few years earlier. The United States had been a continental empire since its founding, but as a result of the ...read more

A family fortune, beloved father and determination to overcome childhood infirmities set young Theodore Roosevelt on course to become the 26th president of the United States. Born into one of New York City’s wealthiest clans on October 27, 1858, Roosevelt was called “as sweet and ...read more

The Golden Age of Hollywood, also known as Classical Hollywood or Old Hollywood, spanned the decades between 1910 and 1960 and typically featured white movie stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Elizabeth Taylor—but Asian American actors also acted in prominent ...read more

In September 1941, German forces invading the Soviet Union took the city of Kyiv, in what is now the nation of Ukraine, and soon afterward perpetrated one of the most horrific acts of genocide in history. On September 29, they forced much of Kyiv’s Jewish population to go to Babi ...read more

In 1941, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government, citing “military necessity,” imprisoned some 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. Most were U.S. citizens and half were children. The overwhelming majority of these individuals ...read more