The American Record

Two months after Detroit fell, Lieutenant Jesse Elliott leads a hundred men in open boats against two anchored British warships on Lake Erie — and gives America its first naval win of the War of 1812.

On a drought-stricken Kentucky battlefield in 1862, two armies stumbled into the bloodiest fight the state would ever see — over nothing more than a few pools of stagnant water.

Four weeks after September 11, the Taliban refuses to give up Osama bin Laden. American and British warplanes open the skies over Afghanistan on a war that would last twenty years.

On October 6, 1777, a British force storms two half-finished forts guarding the Hudson River — and learns that breaking a chain is easier than winning a war.

On October 5, 1813, William Henry Harrison's cavalry shattered a thinning British line on the Thames River, and Tecumseh fell defending a confederacy he'd spent ten years building.

On this day in 1777, George Washington launched a daring four-column dawn assault on British-held Germantown — and watched a wall of fog turn his own army against itself.

On October 3, 1962, astronaut Walter Schirra rode Sigma 7 through six orbits of the Earth, a quiet, nearly flawless flight that gave NASA the confidence to aim for a full day in space.

On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent twelve proposed amendments to the states for ratification. Ten would become the Bill of Rights — though one waited two centuries to take effect.

A magazine editor's shock at a trampled meadow, a naturalist's two essays, and a president's signature combine to create Yosemite National Park in 1890 — but not quite the park John Muir wanted.

On September 30, 1949, the Berlin Airlift officially ended — fifteen months and over two million tons of supplies after it began, having proven American power could win a Cold War standoff without firing a shot.