It is Tuesday evening, April 11, 1865.

All of Washington is bathed in light from lamps and candles set in windows.

Flags fly from balconies and upper-story windows.

At street corners, bonfires blaze.

Near the river, rockets fire into the skies.

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It is May 22, 1849.

Alonzo Delano, a storekeeper from Ottawa, Illinois, is in a wagon train in the midst of the prairie which, in eighteen years, will become the state of Nebraska.

It is the seventh week of his overland trip to California, where he hopes the climate will cure his tuberculosis.

From Alonzo’s memoir:

A little before noon we saw the grass-covered sand hills which bounded the valley of the Platte [River].

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It is April 9, 1865.

President Lincoln is aboard the steamer River Queen, returning to Washington from a two-week visit to General Grant’s headquarters in City Point, Virginia.

It had been a tumultuous visit.

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It is June 10, 1861.

On June 8, Tennessee voters went to the polls and chose to secede from the Union in an election marred with allegations of fraud.

But military mobilization in Tennessee, under the pro-secession governor, has been underway for weeks.

A Nashville man whose name is P. Burns is writing to his friend Ann in Missouri.

Arrived in my old State of Tennessee [after traveling] and never saw the like.

Men, women and children are imbued with the spirit of war.

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It is the summer of 1929.

Winston Churchill is crisscrossing Canada and the US on a three-month lecture tour.

A mere member of Parliament and no longer serving in government, he was preparing to write a biography of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, the famous general who had led British armies to victory over the French two hundred years before.

Beginning in Canada, then heading south, to California, Churchill met titans in the American financial world and Hollywood royalty.

And while many were investment experts, it seemed that nearly everybody in America had staked a position in the stock market.

‘So, why not join them?’ he thought.

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Allied air forces have struck the German war machine over the past two days.

Targets included the Krupps factory in Essen, which manufactures tanks, artillery, naval guns, armor plate, munitions, and submarines for the German military.

Also struck was the Renault vehicle factory in Billancourt, near occupied Paris.

Marshall Pétain, the Vichy head of state in occupied France, decried the Billancourt attack.

Pétain claimed that he, and not De Gaulle, the ‘émigré rebel chief in London,’ was providing France with the ‘common sense’ leadership which the moment required.

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Today, a parable of leaders and their people.

Once there ruled in the distant city of Wirani a king who was both mighty and wise.

And he was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom.

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“The uninitiated might tell you that Christmas is the best day of the year because you get things.

But old hands at the Christmas thing know that it frequently disappoints.

The gifts are small and predictable and they set parents off in a squabble about spending money.

But nobody ever squabbles about the circus coming to town.

Hot off the train, they march up Main Street like a royal procession.

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It is June 6, 1944.

Photographer Robert Capa is aboard a troop ship heading towards Omaha Beach.

He will be the only civilian photographer to document the D-Day landings.

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It is August 27, 1930.

John Beemster, the secretary of a Chicago charity, is writing to President Hoover.

It is a difficult time.

The stock market crash happened ten months ago.

Since then, banks have begun to fail and people are losing their savings.

Factory production has begun to decline, businesses are closing and unemployment is rising.

In the spring, a severe drought struck the Plains.

Crops and livestock were lost and some farmers, especially renters, are abandoning their land.

Other countries have imposed retaliatory tariffs in response to the two-month-old Smoot-Hawley tariffs, so foreign imports have become expensive.

But Hoover believes that federal intervention in the economy is wrong.

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