Erin Blakemore Archives ‑ History.com

What Was 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, California. Just a few years before, the author […]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice Since 1993, 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 marked the end of an era for a court indelibly shaped both […]

This New Deal Summer Camp Program Aimed to Help Unemployed Women

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 the New Deal’s dime. […]

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 production. Seemingly overnight, car factories produced warplanes. Lipstick […]

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 prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter explained that the state couldn’t find any of […]

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. Most of the people who owned them were already dead, murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust’s largest extermination and […]

Elections in Colonial America Were Huge, Booze‑Fueled Parties

From rum to cakes to rowdy parades, election day was a time for gathering and celebration.

All the Ways People Escaped Across the Berlin Wall

Desperation drove ingenuity among East Germans determined to reach West Berlin.

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 1763, George III had announced that the colonies would no […]

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 of World War II. They didn’t want to leave, but they had been […]

The Election of One of the First Latino Congressmen Was Contested—Twice

Romualdo Pacheco was adroit at bear‑wrangling and politics alike, but in 1877 he faced a rocky road to the House of Representatives.

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 or challenging fare by any means. But though the show is […]