Samuel Morse gets the patent for the telegraph, the three-day, 1943 Detroit race riot begins, and it is the birthday of playwright Lillian Hellman - with a reading from her memoir "Pentimento."

The first baseball game is played, enslaved people in Texas are told they are finally free, and President John F. Kennedy submits his Civil Rights Act to Congress - with a reading from Kennedy's landmark speech on Civil Rights.

Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo, Charles Darwin learns that another naturist was about to publish a theory of evolution nearly identical to Darwin's, and Winston Churchill delivers his speech "Their Finest Hour." Paul McCartney and Roger Ebert were born on this day. And an excerpt from Churchill's "Their Finest Hour."

Explorer Sir Francis Drake claims land on America's West Coast and sends a geopolitical ripple across 300 years of American history. American colonists fight the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor, and it's the anniversary of the Watergate break in. The U.S. established it's second Independence Day - marking Juneteenth, the end of slavery in the U.S. - with a reading from Congress.

Abraham Lincoln delivers his speech not known as "A House Divided," and it is Bloomsday. It is also the birthday of Joyce Carol Oates - with a reading from her book "We Were the Mulvaneys."

England's King John signs the Magna Carta and Arlington National Cemetery is established in the U.S. It is the birthday of Ramon Lopez Velarde - with a reading from his poem "Because of this Modest Style."

It is the birthday of the U.S. Armed Forces, and Charles Babbage presents his "difference engine," and the Bear Flag Revolt makes America bigger. It is also the birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe - with a reading from her landmark book "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Thurgood Marshall is nominated to the U.S Supreme Court, the New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers, and it is the birthday of William Butler Yeats - with a reading of Yeats' "The Second Coming."

Virginia adopts the influential Declaration of Rights written by George Mason, on her 13 th birthday, Anne Frank gets a blank book, and the U.S. Supreme Court rules that interracial couples can marry. It is Rona Jaffe's birthday - with a reading from her book "The Best of Everything."

Civil rights come into focus on this day in 1963. A Buddhist monk sets himself on fire to protest religious oppression in Vietnam, Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in a UA doorway to prevent two Black students from attending the University, and Pres. John F. Kennedy promises new civil rights legislation. NAACP activist Medgar Evers is assassinated. This episode includes a reading from "Medgar Evers: A Hero in Life and Death."