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HISTORY Honors 250
Becky Little is a journalist based in Washington, D.C.
The controversial shroud that is claimed to have once covered the body of Jesus first appeared in the 1350s and is now available for online viewing.
Political campaign slogans haven't always caught on. In fact, some have proven odd or embarrassing.
Evidence of warming temperatures have been detected as early as the 1830s.
Computer programming used to be a ‘pink ghetto’—so it was underpaid and undervalued.
The first African American to seek the nomination of a major party competed against George Wallace, the face of Southern segregation.
Dig into the superstitions that surround King Tut’s tomb, the Hope Diamond and more.
A victim of the Mt. Vesuvius eruption was lying in his bed when a searing ash cloud swept through his city. Soon, it turned out, he had a brain of glass.
Women inventors are behind a wide range of key innovations, from Kevlar to dishwashers to better life rafts.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice president was an anti-labor conservative who clashed with the president over federal spending and FDR's decision to run for a third term.
Athens developed a system in which every free Athenian man had a vote in the Assembly.
Presidents dating back to George Washington have faced opposition to their nominees for the nation's highest court.
The first president’s tresses were a keepsake for the family of Alexander Hamilton.
In 1931, a Commission of crime families began running New York City rackets, initiating an era of colorful nicknames and violent power struggles.
On March 14, 1951, Albert Einstein was celebrating his 72nd birthday at the Princeton Club in New Jersey when a group of photographers asked to take a photo.
Long before it got its name, Gerrymandering was already happening in the United States.
Black Americans could temporarily escape the Jim Crow laws at early vacation resorts that catered only to them.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes in his new book that Pat Nixon visited the emergency room and alleged that her husband had hit her shortly after Nixon resigned.
Congress gets a record number of women, The U.K. “brexits” and we commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
General Pinochet’s agents hunted down Chile’s former Ambassador in the first state-sponsored international terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Newt Gingrich was offended that Clinton hadn't talked to him on Air Force One.
The president and Congress clashed over welfare, crime, defense spending and whether to fund Contras in Nicaragua.
Native Americans won U.S. citizenship in 1924, but the struggle for voting rights stretched on for much longer.
Scientists now believe the plague spread too fast for rats to be the culprits.
Some of the oldest known art may hint at the beginning of language development, while later examples portray narratives with human and animal figures.
The discovery of a 4,500-year-old ramp offers clues about Egyptians' technological knowledge.
Why go to the trouble of tracking and killing an animal when a saber-tooth cat can do the job instead?
Blame it on “Snowball Earth.”
Rumors of ghosts haunt U.S. cemeteries, hotels and even the White House.
Officials feared Halloween celebrations could spread the virus or disrupt those who were sick or mourning.
The 1990 protest demonstrated the barriers that inaccessible buildings create for people with disabilities.
People were outraged when teenage boys vandalized towns on October 31, 1933—so they found a way to keep them inside.
By the time Thanksgiving became an official U.S. holiday in 1863, wild turkeys had nearly disappeared. But Depression-era shifts in land use helped the animals rebound.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrates the history and contributions of Native Americans and has been federally recognized since 2021.
As survivors of history’s only atomic bomb attacks, they made it a mission to warn the world about the horrors of nuclear war.
The arrangement began in 1997 as part of a gradual return of the territory to China from British colonial rule.
Was Dancer’s Image disqualified because his owner supported the civil rights movement?
After North Korea’s bizarre bid to co-host the 1988 Olympics, it tried to disrupt them with a bomb.
While Richard Jewell was an initial suspect, it took collaboration between federal and local investigators to zero-in on the actual bomber, Eric Rudolph.
With elements of surfing and skateboarding the sport has become one of the most popular at the Winter Olympics.
The league was supposed to be temporary, but went on for 12 seasons.
For a long time, it wasn't possible to immigrate illegally to the U.S.
The first major period of Arab immigration started around 1880, when residents of the Ottoman Empire began to come to the United States.
Queen Thyra was honored on engraved stones more than anyone else in Viking-Age Denmark.
Augustus told Romans he was the only one who could save Rome. And they believed him.
After the assassination, King's family did not trust the findings of the FBI, which had harassed the civil rights leader while he was alive.
Census workers were expected to count ‘insane’ and ‘idiotic’ Americans for half a century.
From Stalin's reign of terror to Gorbachev and glasnost, meet the eight leaders who presided over the USSR.
The family tree of Prince Harry's fiancé is getting a lot of attention.
'He just beat the hell out of me,' Kennedy said.
Holmes allegedly killed as many as 200 by luring visitors to his lair during the Chicago World's Fair. But historians say many of the stories about Holmes, the "devil," may be myth.
Robbers have used tunnels, explosives and even surfboard repair foam to make off with millions.
Waitlists, bombings and restrictive U.S. immigration policies thwarted Anne Frank's family's chances of escaping the Holocaust.
Zora Neale Hurston's searing book about Cudjo Lewis, brought to Alabama aboard the Clotilda—the last known US slave ship—took nearly 90 years to find a publisher.
The amendment, which officially abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, includes a loophole regarding involuntary servitude.
After Charles I of Spain signed an edict launching the transatlantic slave trade, human cargo on transatlantic voyages spiked nearly tenfold.
The story of the Clotilda and the people who built Africatown.
Like the Olympic Games, the Heraia race was held every four years, likely as part of a prenuptial initiation ritual.
Here's how Alexander, one of history's most iconic military leaders, grew the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia and conquered the Persian Empire.
The colony of Rhode Island once had the highest percentage of enslaved people in New England, and was a dominant player in the global slave trade.
Is it time to alter or abolish the Jones Act?
Scientists are using the legend to draw attention to their research project. And why not?
Two autoworkers who reportedly mistook Chin to be Japanese received no jail time for the killing.
Although France paid for the statue, the US had to pay for the pedestal.
Dissent at or inside the statue began with its unveiling in 1886.
Estimates say it killed 830,000 people.
It killed 100,000 people in the direct impact. But it led to tens of millions more deaths later.
In a time when military pensions were a large part of the federal budget, Black women faced unique challenges in securing compensation.
John Lewis was arrested 40 times during the civil rights movement.
For this, historians consistently rank him as one of the worst US presidents.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote in a court decision that 'Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided,' but that didn’t overrule the 1944 decision endorsing Japanese internment.
A new memorial and museum in Montgomery, Alabama, challenges the nation to acknowledge its crimes.
In 18th-century Britain, soldiers extorted money by threatening to accuse men of sodomy.
Alexander Hamilton was strongly in favor of giving American presidents this 'kingly' power. But can a presidential pardon be overruled?
Until 1989, Russians claimed they were not trying to reach the Moon first and that the U.S. was in “a one-nation race."
During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress became America's de facto government.
Claims the Apollo 11 mission was staged began soon after astronauts first set foot on the moon in 1969.
NASA created simulations that mimicked everything from the moon’s gravity to its landscape.
Lotteries helped build libraries, roads and even Harvard.
After the Revolutionary War, a series of revolutions took place throughout Europe and the Americas.
As colonists grew increasingly defiant, the British government responded with punishing measures that only angered them more.
Unlike the northern free states, Mexico didn’t agree to return people who had fled slavery.
During World War I, Denmark finally sold Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix to the U.S. for $25 million in gold coin.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton focused on white women’s suffrage over voting rights for all women.
The Disney animation team spent three years, $1.4 million—and nearly 2 million separate paintings—in making its first feature-length film.
While the 1897 novel 'Dracula' launched a genre of literature and film about vampires, a 1922 knock-off film cast the villain in a whole new light.
Biloxi, Mississippi, will remove the book from school curriculums.
Here’s why three famous winners didn’t take their Oscars home.
A priestess named Enheduanna claimed authorship to poetry and other texts—sometimes in first-person—more than a millennium before Homer.
Archaeologists decoded part of the ‘unknown’ writing system from the Kushan Empire using the same technique that helped decipher the Rosetta Stone.
To consolidate power, the last queen of Egypt married—then killed—her siblings. And she bore children with Roman allies Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Sure, the Roman Empire had that extensive road system. But it helped that early Christians didn't paint themselves as an exclusive club.
At its peak, Rome stretched over much of Europe and the Middle East.
Some instruments of torture, like the rack, were real. Others were likely made up to help perpetuate the myth of the medieval 'Dark Ages.'
Scientists have discovered new evidence of the ancient culture in South America.
The mysterious epidemic that devastated Aztecs may have been food poisoning.
The huge drawings depicting human forms, birds and snakes may have served as sites for rituals and markers for travelers.
The highly contagious disease dates to ancient times and spread easily in households and classrooms—until the development of a vaccine.
The son of the famous president died in the 1999 accident, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette.
Christa McAuliffe embraced the chance to be part of a space shuttle mission and, despite the Challenger disaster, left an inspiring legacy.
The shocking disaster delayed the speech for one week.