The decisive year was 1968. In the early morning of 30 January, Vietcong forces launched the Tet Offensive, named for the Vietnamese holiday then being observed. In coordinated attacks throughout South Vietnam, the Vietcong assaulted major urban areas and mi…
On May 07, 1954, Viet Minh forces won the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and ended French involvement in Indochina. This victory led to the Geneva Conference where the French and Viet Minh negotiated a ceasefire agreement. Under the terms of Geneva Accords, France …
New York Central's breathtaking Grand Central Terminal (or GCT) is a New York City landmark and world-famous station. It was built during the Golden Age of rail travel and exemplified the power and scope railroads wielded at that time. While the terminal was…
On 27 June 1953, the United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korean Communist forces signed an armistice ending three years of fighting in Korea. Although the American-led UNC failed to win the entire peninsula, it successfully repelled Communist attacks sout…
Before the high-rises, condos and financial centers of Battery Park City, the area behind the Twin Towers was a landfill. In 1982, artist Agnes Denes was commissioned by the Public Art Fund to create one of the most significant pieces of public work Manhat…
Until the atomic bomb could be tested, doubt would remain about its effectiveness. The world had never seen a nuclear explosion before, and estimates varied widely on how much energy would be released. Some scientists at Los Alamos continued privately to hav…
The American Civil War lasted for just four years, from 1861 to 1865 and it is often also known as the War Between the States. It was the event where 11 Southern States that supported Slavery declared their succession from the United States, and announced th…
The second part of the American Civil War photo collection coves the people of the Civil War: the generals, slaves, civilians, politicians, and soldiers that lived through those turbulent years. Although photography was still in its infancy, war corresponden…
The Civil War was certainly the most catastrophic event in American history. More than 600,000 Northerners and Southerners died in the war, a greater number than all those who had died in all other American wars combined. As many as 50,000 died in a single b…
After Pearl Harbor the Japanese quickly gained control over a huge area of the Pacific, from the Philippines to Burma to the Aleutians to the Solomons. While the Japanese enjoyed the advantage of interior lines of communication, they had somewhat overextende…
In the 1860s and 1870s, photographer Timothy O'Sullivan created some of the best-known images in American History. After covering the U.S. Civil War, O'Sullivan was the official photographer on the United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Paralle…
Covering 1,216 acres, in Flushing Meadows, New York, the 1939 New York World's Fair, like the legendary Phoenix rising from the ashes, was erected on what was an ash-dump. The theme, "Building the World of Tomorrow" echoed in virtually every corner of the Fa…
The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor began just before 8 a.m. local time Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. For over an hour, in two waves, some 350 Japanese aircraft—having taken off from six aircraft carriers 230 miles north of Oahu—attacked the nav…
When war broke out Europe in September 1939, the American merchant fleet was caught unprepared to handle a massive sealift of war material. With continental Europe under German control, and Great Britain under devastating air attack, President Franklin Roose…
The photo first appeared in the The Vidette-Messenger of Valparaiso, Indiana on August 5, 1948. The children looked posed and a bit confused as their pregnant mother hides her face from the photographer. The caption read: “A big ‘For Sale’ sign in a Chicag…
On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright piloted the first powered airplane 20 feet above a wind-swept beach in North Carolina. The flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. Three more flights were made that day with Orville's brother Wilbur piloting the re…
In 1973, the US Army started testing possible designs for an anti-tank grenade. Commanders in Europe had asked for some sort of ordnance for destroying tanks in close quarters. If Warsaw Pact troops had invaded, NATO soldiers could have found themselves taki…
Thirty vivid, oversize black-and-white photos from the Library of Congress show the Detroit in the 1940s. Full-screen scenes show vintage vehicles, fashions, hairstyles, the Crowley-Milner department store, Cunningham's drugs, a streetcar, Chrysler's tank as…