The American Record

Five years after the Civil War ended, one Confederate state still legally stood outside the Union. The story of Georgia's twice-repeated readmission — and the Black legislators expelled and reseated along the way.

On the same day the Bastille fell in France, President John Adams signed a law making it a crime to criticize his own government — and set off a fight over free speech that would help decide an election.

In the summer of 1787, a dying Congress of the Confederation in New York quietly passed one last law about a wilderness few of its members had ever seen — and drew a line across America that would outlast the government that drew it.

In the summer of 1812, a confident American army crossed into British Canada. Weeks later, its general surrendered without firing a shot — a collapse that reshaped the entire war in the west.

At dawn on a rocky ledge above the Hudson, a sitting Vice President and the architect of the American Treasury settled thirteen years of hatred with pistols. Only one of them meant to fire.

A wrecked Japanese fighter sits hidden on a remote Alaskan island for over a month — until a routine patrol pilot spots it and changes the air war in the Pacific.

On Saipan, a fanatical last charge and a cliff full of terrified civilians end a 24-day battle that puts Tokyo within reach of American bombers for the first time.

On July 8, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis launched for the final time, closing out 30 years and 135 missions of the Space Shuttle program.

In 1846, a commodore who'd waited days for confirmation of war finally moved — and Monterey, California changed hands without a single shot fired.

On July 6, 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a thermonuclear device beneath the Nevada desert to prove the bomb could build as well as destroy. The blast carved the largest crater in America — and sent fallout drifting straight into the Midwest.