The Archive
Every pivotal moment, all in one place
The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906
Before dawn, the ground ripped open and the city burned for three days a disaster that rebuilt San Francisco in steel.
The Klondike Gold Rush: To the Frozen North
When gold was found near the Yukon, a hundred thousand dreamers braved ice and mountain passes for a chance at fortune.
The California Gold Rush: Forty-Niners and a Golden Fever
A glint in a millrace in 1848 drew hundreds of thousands west in the fastest mass migration in American history.
The Louisiana Purchase: Doubling a Nation
For about three cents an acre, the United States bought a continent's worth of land and set its course to the Pacific.
The Alaska Purchase: Seward's Icebox
The U.S. bought a frozen wilderness from Russia for two cents an acre and was widely mocked for buying a 'refrigerator.'
The Panama Canal Opens: The Ocean-to-Ocean Shortcut
After disease, disaster, and a change of continents, the world's great canal finally linked the Atlantic and Pacific by locks.
The Opening of the Suez Canal: Two Seas Made One
After a decade of digging, a man-made waterway joined the Mediterranean and the Red Sea and shrank the world by weeks of sailing.
The Fall of Saigon: The Last Helicopter
As North Vietnamese tanks rolled in, the U.S. embassy's rooftop became the iconic image of a superpower's longest war ending in flight.
The Stonewall Riots: The Night the Closet Opened
A police raid on a Greenwich Village bar met resistance and a marginalized community rose up to claim its place in the world.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A Year on Foot
For 381 days, a community refused to ride the buses and broke segregation through sheer endurance.
Rosa Parks: The Refusal That Started a Movement
A seamstress in Montgomery simply stayed seated and ignited the modern civil rights movement.
The Emancipation Proclamation: Freedom as a War Aim
Midway through a bloody war, a president declared millions of enslaved people free and changed the meaning of the conflict.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
In the shadow of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the world agreed on a single list of rights every human possesses simply by being human.
Love Canal: The Suburb Built on Poison
Families discovered their backyards sat atop a buried toxic waste dump and a movement for environmental justice was born.
Three Mile Island: The Reactor That Nearly Broke
A partial meltdown in Pennsylvania froze the American nuclear dream and rewired how the world feared the atom.
The Exxon Valdez: A Wake-Up Call in the Wilderness
A single tanker ran aground in pristine Alaska, spilling a river of oil that stained the coast for a generation.
Deepwater Horizon: The Gulf on Fire
An explosion on a deep-sea rig unleashed the largest marine oil spill in history and fouled the Gulf for years.
The Hindenburg Disaster: The End of the Airship Age
Live on the radio, the largest airship ever built burst into flame and killed the dream of passenger flight by zeppelin.