America
Alamo: Torn Over Texas
By 1830, more than 20,000 Americans were living and growing cotton in Texas on land that belonged to Mexico. These Americans had about 2,000 slaves to work the cotton, even though Mexico outlawed slavery. When the Texans’ request to separate from Mexico was denied, they decided to secede.
Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the West
While his peers from the Hudson River Valley group of artists were painting landscapes of that part of New York, Albert Bierstadt went after views that were far more remote.
Battle Of Little Big Horn: Custer's Last Stand
The most famous Indian battle in American history is the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand. Depicted in films and novels, the battle at the Little Big Horn River, located in what is now Montana, proved to be the death of U.S. Army General George Armstrong Custer and 265 [...]
Alabama: Camellia State
CAPITAL: MontgomeryJOINED UNION: December 14, 1819STATE BIRD: YellowhammerSTATE FLOWER: CamelliaMEANING OF STATE NAME: Name means "tribal town" in Creek Indian language1992 POPULATION: 4,135,543RANK FOR POPULATION: 22LAND AREA: 50,750 square milesRANK IN SIZE IN UNION: 29
Al Capone: Scarface Scars Chicago
America has a certain fascination with outlaws: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Bonnie and Clyde, for example. In the 1920s, violent gangsters led a wave of crime in Chicago and "Scarface" Al Capone was one of their most notorious leaders.
African-Americans: Unwilling Immigrants
In 1619, the first African slaves were sold in the Jamestown colony. Slavery, however, was not new. In 1442, Portuguese ships took some Africans as slaves and the Spanish quickly followed their lead and began to trade slaves as cheap labor to the New World. The British followed suit in 1562 and by 1600 the [...]
Adobe: Making The Most Of Mud
In 1608, when the Spanish made Santa Fe the capital of their province of New Mexico and began building the governor’s palace, they used an Indian building material called adobe, sun-dried clay, instead of more typical European materials in traditional European architectural style. Today, adobe buildings can be seen throughout the American Southwest, especially in [...]
Abraham Lincoln: From Hick to Hero
Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of the United States’ greatest presidents, but that wasn’t what people thought of him during the Civil War. Then he was an amateur, a hick, a tyrant and a bungler. Not only did Southerners hate him, many Northerners did as well. They were sick of the slaughter of the [...]
Abortion: The Roe V. Wade Ruling
In 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation sharply divided the American people over slavery. Then, one-hundred ten years later, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade divided America again, this time over abortion. With the possible exception of the Vietnam War, no single issue since slavery has caused such emotional upheaval and as many [...]
"The Grapes of Wrath": Dust Bowl Disaster
In the 1930s, drought and horrific dust storms turned the once-fertile agricultural lands of mid-America into virtual dust bowls and wastelands. Thousands of destitute farmers packed their families and belongings into and onto their cars and left their homes in search of agricultural work in central California. Their plight and the politics of that day [...]