The American Record

On a Gulf morning in 1864, a Union admiral lashed to his ship's rigging pushes his fleet through a minefield to close the Confederacy's last open port.

In Berlin's Olympic Stadium, Adolf Hitler watches from his box as a Black American sprinter from Alabama crosses the finish line first. The story of Jesse Owens' first gold medal in 1936, and the country he came home to.

A stenographer types dictation she thinks came from a madman — and the letter she takes down changes the shape of the 20th century.

On August 1, 1876, Colorado became the 38th state — missing the nation's centennial by less than a month, but keeping the nickname anyway.

A penniless Congress and a nineteen-year-old French nobleman strike an unlikely bargain in the summer of 1777 — one that would eventually help win the war at Yorktown.

After delivering the atomic bomb's core to Tinian, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed without escort, leaving 890 men adrift for four days in the deadliest single sea disaster in U.S. naval history.

A Confederate spy who rode through gunfire to warn Stonewall Jackson's army is finally undone not by detectives, but by the man who loved her.

On July 9, 1868, South Carolina cast the vote that pushed the Fourteenth Amendment past its ratification threshold — but only if two rescinded votes still counted. The story of how Congress refused to let two states take back "yes."

On July 27, 1953, generals signed an armistice at Panmunjom to end the Korean War, but South Korea's own president refused to put his name on it. The document froze a war in place that, technically, has never ended.

In 1941, Washington froze Japan's assets and cut off its oil, betting economic pressure would restrain Tokyo. Instead it set both nations on a collision course toward Pearl Harbor.