What was Richard Henry Dana doing before he shipped out as a sailor in the voyage recounted in Two Years Before the Mast (1840)?

The first political party in America was the Federalist Party, founded in 1790 by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Around the same time, Thomas Jefferson built a rival organization that became known as the Republican or Democratic-Republican Party.

The man who had been expelled from Harvard, William Randolph Hearst, bought or started 42 newspapers. Only a handful remained by the time of his death in 1951.

There are more than 97 million items are in the collections of the Library of Congress, including books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and records.

The Wisconsin Idea was a plan for reform created by Wisconsin Governor Robert M. La Follette in the early 1900s. This first statewide progressive reform plan was designed to erode the corruption of political bosses and big business, particularly the railroad trust.

The Tet Offensive was a general attack in January 1968 by North Vietnamese forces against South Vietnamese cities. Militarily, North Vietnam lost since they suffered heavy losses and failed to hold any city. But strategically North Vietnam delivered a severe blow to the U.S. by showing that the war was far from over and undermining…

Abigail Van Buren (born Pauline Esther “Popo” Friedman) and Ann Landers (born Esther Pauline “Eppie” Friedman) are identical twins born on July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1955, Eppie took over as Ruth Crowley’s replacement on the Chicago Sun-Times “Dear Ann Landers” advice column. In 1956, the other sister began writing under the…