The American Record

In 1946, the Navy detonated a nuclear bomb underwater at Bikini Atoll to prove its fleet could survive the atomic age — and instead discovered a threat no admiral had planned for.

Unanimous, and appointed by the man they ruled against — how eight Supreme Court justices forced Richard Nixon to hand over the tapes that ended his presidency.

In the summer of 1862, Lincoln searched for a general who could impose order on a war spinning out of control. What he found was a brilliant organizer who couldn't make anyone fight.

On July 22, 1943, General George S. Patton's Seventh Army pushed into Palermo, giving the Allies a captured capital, a working port, and the first American commander of the war to become a household name.

On July 21, 1861, a Union army marched out to crush the rebellion in an afternoon — and Washington's picnic crowds watched what they thought would be a ninety-day war die on a Virginia hillside.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11's Lunar Module Eagle descends toward the Moon with alarms blaring and fuel running out — a story of split-second judgment calls and a landing that changed what Americans believed possible.

On July 19, 1943, 690 American bombers hit a Rome rail yard and struck a fifth-century basilica instead. Pope Pius XII walked the wreckage that afternoon, and the photographs changed how the war looked to millions.

On July 18, 1966, Gemini 10 launched astronauts John Young and Michael Collins on a mission to dock with one target, chase down another, and prove spacewalks could work — closing the checklist NASA needed before Apollo could aim for the moon.

On July 17, 1975, American and Soviet spacecraft docked in orbit, and two astronaut-cosmonaut crews shook hands through an open hatch, closing the Apollo era with cooperation instead of another moon landing.

Before dawn on July 16, 1945, 425 people watched a tower vanish in the New Mexico desert. The story of Trinity, the first nuclear detonation, and the men who weren't sure it would work.