The American Record

A newspaper editor's decision to run an unverified story from the Pacific coast sets off one of the great migrations in American history. This is the story of the New York Herald's 1848 gold rush scoop.

On August 18, 1920, a 24-year-old Tennessee lawmaker breaks a tie in his state legislature and delivers the final vote needed to add the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution — all because of a letter from his mother.

On August 17, 1943, 376 American B-17s split into two forces to hit Germany's fighter and ball-bearing factories in one day — and paid the heaviest single-mission price the Eighth Air Force had yet suffered.

A pre-dawn collision on a sandy South Carolina road ends in an hour with an American army destroyed, a general disgraced, and command of the Southern war handed to the man who would finish it at Yorktown.

On this day in 1962, a demoralized Army private ran across a minefield at the Korean DMZ and vanished behind enemy lines for good. Plus, Lafayette returns to America and Hirohito's voice ends a world war.

On August 14, 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, creating America's first federal old-age pension. The story of the man with a flat-payment crusade who forced Washington's hand, and the law that followed.

In Manila Bay in 1898, Spain and America stage a battle that isn't real — until the Filipino army that actually won the siege gets locked out of the city, and the shots meant to be theater turn fatal.

On Guam in 1944, American Marines finally declare the island secure after three brutal weeks of jungle fighting — reclaiming territory the Japanese had held since three days after Pearl Harbor.

Three days after Hiroshima, a B-29 called Bockscar runs low on fuel over Japan, diverts through clouds and smoke, and drops the second atomic bomb before limping into an emergency landing with minutes of fuel left.

Before dawn on August 6, 1945, a B-29 named for a pilot's mother carried a weapon no one had ever used in war. What happened over Hiroshima that morning would end a world war and start an argument America still hasn't finished.