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How The HistoryMakers strives to share the African-American experience
This weekend, many PBS stations will air “An Evening with Ken Chenault,” a special about the man who was chairman and CEO of American Express for 17 years. It was created by The HistoryMakers, a Chicago-based oral history project collecting…
WWII sailor in iconic Times Square kiss photo dies at 95
In one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, George Mendonsa kisses Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse's uniform, on Aug. 14, 1945, the day Japan surrendered to the United States.
Why we still need paper maps
"Maps can take you places that you wouldn’t think to go," said Betsy Mason, coauthor of the book "All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey."…
How a strange rumor of Walt Disney’s death became legend
When you hear "Disney on Ice," you may think of the wildly popular ice shows featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse and others skating in hockey arenas across the nation. But there's also the disturbing urban legend that Walt Disney’s corpse…
As Black Lives Matter protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in D.C. sent curators to collect t-shirts and gas masks -- artifacts it could…
In April 1986, fire raged through the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, damaging or destroying more than a million books. Journalist and author Susan Orlean resurrects this nearly forgotten story in “The Library Book,” which also explores the emotional…
A new, single volume of history sets out to explore the experiment in government that is the United States. Jeffrey Brown sits down with award-winning Harvard historian Jill Lepore, author of “These Truths: A History of the United States,” to…
In Spain, a constitutional debate has arisen over the body of former dictator Francisco Franco. The new left-wing government wants to relocate Franco's remains, which lie in the Valley of the Fallen, a Spanish civil war monument near Madrid. But…
From July 21 to July 24, 1976, more than 2,000 members of the Pennsylvania chapters of the American Legion attended their annual state convention at a Philadelphia hotel. By Aug. 15, 182 Legionnaires who attended the convention were ill with…
