American Experience | Official Site

Billy the Kid | Article

The Pardoning of Billy the Kid

When Govenor Bill Richardson announced his intention to research a potential pardon for Billy the Kid, 129 years after his death, it caused major controversy.

John and Abigail Adams | Article

The Choice for Revolution

Follow John Adams as he changed from a loyal colonist into a revolutionary leader.

Film

Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory

In the chaotic decade following the Civil War, a group of young ex-slaves in Nashville, Tennessee, set out on a mission to save their financially troubled school by giving concerts.

Film

Scientist Mária Telkes dedicated her career to harnessing the power of the sun. Though undercut and thwarted by her male colleagues, she persevered to design the first successfully solar-heated house in 1948 and held more than 20 patents.

Film

War of the Worlds

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Halloween Eve, 1938, a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin that Martians had landed in the tiny town of Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

The Man Behind Hitler | Image Gallery

Homefront Propaganda in Germany and the U.S.A.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and the American Office of War Information took on similar tasks during World War II. View propaganda posters from the U.S. and Germany.

Film

The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken

The songs A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and her cousin Maybelle recorded in August 1927 to audition for Victor Talking Machine Company drew upon the rich musical traditions of their native rural Appalachia. The Carter Family sang of love and loss, desperation and joy, and their music captured the attention of a nation entering the darkest days of the depression.

Reagan | Primary Source

Book Excerpt: President Reagan, The Role of a Lifetime

Read the preface to the 2000 edition of the book, "President Reagan, The Role of a Lifetime," by Lou Cannon.

Chasing the Moon | Article

Wernher von Braun and the Nazis

Wernher von Braun led NASA'S development of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo 11 to the Moon. His Nazi record was not widely known until after his death.

War of the Worlds | Behind the Scenes

Making War of the Worlds

Actors, antique radios, and the greatest prank of all times. Behind the scenes with the producers of War of the Worlds.

Alexander Hamilton | Timeline

Alexander Hamilton Chronology

Alexander Hamilton was born on the British island of Nevis in the West Indies, the second of two boys.

The Island Murder | Article

Yates Stirling Jr. (1872-1948)

Stirling's racial prejudices coupled with his militaristic view of the American territory of Hawai'i, set the stage for his role in the Massie affair.

Victory in the Pacific | Primary Source

Negotiating the Surrender

Several days after the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, Secretary of State James Byrnes drafted the following letter to a Swiss diplomat serving as an intermediary in negotiations with the Japanese.

Film

Minik

In 1897, renowned Arctic explorer Robert Peary returned to New York from his latest Greenland expedition. At the request of anthropologist Franz Boas, he brought with him five polar Inuits for study at the American Museum of Natural History. Within months, four of them had fallen sick and died, leaving a seven-year-old boy named Minik to fend for himself in a foreign land.