The timeline described in Frederick Jackson Turner's essay points to 1890 as the end of the American frontier that had been a part of the this country's heritage and culture since the very first settlers arrived. There was plenty o...

When George W. Bush (born 1946) won a disputed election to become president of the United States, it capped a meteoric rise to power in a relatively short political career that combined good timing, a powerful family, and uncanny campaigni...

Gerald Ford (born 1913) served as Republican leader in the House of Representatives before being selected by President Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew as vice president in 1973. A year later he replaced Nixon himself, who resigned due to the ...

"What we do in life echoes in eternity." A famous tag line of the movie that Maximus (Russell Crowe) said to his men before they merge in the battlefield. Maximus is a powerful Roman general, loved by the people and the aging Emperor, Marcu...

worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeco...

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), thirty-third president of the United States, led America's transition from wartime to peacetime economy, forged the Truman doctrine, and made the decision to defend South Korea against Communist invasion. Harry...

Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), thirty-first president of the United States, could not halt the severest economic depression in American history because his governmental theories prevented him from taking drastic steps. On Aug. 10, 1874,...

Life in Berlin means living with history, especially the legacy of the city's Nazi past. The years 1933 to 1945, when Berlin was the capital of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich—Berliners call it the "brown past"— continue to define th...

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were periods of questioning and searching for truth. The practice of challenging traditional institutions, including the Church, was revolutionary. Individuals began to use reason to guide their actio...

Mongolia has two histories, one before the Mongols emerged as a distinct people, and one after. Before the Mongols, the area of today's Mongolia was host to a variety of cultures, some directly ancestral to the Mongols, some not. Th...

The United States today is one of the most democratic, industrialized and economically advanced nations in the world. The liberty of American citizens goes unmatched by any other nation. The first two decades of the 19th century laid some...

The culture, lifestyle, and direction of America that resulted from the 1960's were, without question, a unique chapter in its history. However, this can be said of all reform movements throughout American history. It is because of this t...

Organization set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youths aged 13–18 in Nazi principles. Under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974), by 1935 it included almost 60% of all German boys...

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a major turning point in the history of that island nation. Before the revolution, Cuba's economy revolved around the cultivation of sugar, tobacco, and tropical fruits, most of which were sold to the United...

South American Indians who, at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1532, ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile. The Inca es...

As inhabitants of a new nation, Americans faced a particularly daunting task. Devoting much of their energy and most of their resources to survival, they had little time or money for cultural pursuits. As John Adams put it in 1780, "It i...

James Abram Garfield (1831-1881) was an American Civil War general before becoming the twentieth president of the United States. He was assassinated after 6 months in office. James A. Garfield was born in the log cabin of American myth on ...

James Madison (1751-1836), the fourth president of the United States, was one of the principal founders of America's republican form of government. James Madison lived all his life in the county of Orange, Va., on a 5,000-acre plantation t...

Internment facility for Japanese Americans during World War II. Fear that Japan would invade the western U.S. with the aid of spies living in the U.S. led the government to force Japanese Americans in western states to relocate to one of t...

The second president of the United States, John Adams (1735-1826) played a major role in the colonial movement toward independence. He wrote the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 and served as a diplomatic representative of Congress in th...

John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886) was the founder of the Oneida Community, one of the notable experimental societies of his century. John Humphrey Noyes, born on Sept. 3, 1811, in Brattleboro, Vt., was raised in an individualistic family by ...

John Tyler (1790-1862), tenth president of the United States, was the first vice president to succeed to the presidency. His administration was marked by great conflict over the Texas question. John Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, at Gre...

The American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) wrote one of the first ethnographies, invented the study of kinship terminology, and made an early attempt to grapple with the idea of universal principles of cultural evolution. L...

For the first four centuries following the birth of Christ, most of Great Britain and western Europe was under the control of the Roman Empire. From time to time, the Celtic tribes who had inhabited Britain and France for several hundred ye...

Despite some notable achievements, the American arts of the 1990s seemed to be gripped by an end-of-the-century cynicism, with profit governing product. Giving people want they wanted (or what marketing experts thought they wanted) seemed...