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The Constitution is more than a legal code. It is also a framework for union and solidarity.

In the hundred years since his death, features of Woodrow Wilson’s philosophy have become central to international politics and American foreign policy.

Charles Lindbergh and the isolationists of American First opposed Lend Lease and Roosevelt’s attempts to prepare for possible war in Europe.

The boy's vicious killing in Mississippi in 1955 helped to transform America's racial consciousness.

Classic Essays from Our Archives

"I Had Prayed to God That This Thing Was Fiction…" | February 1990, Vol 41, No 1

By William Wilson

He didn’t want the job, but felt he should do it. For the first time, the soldier who tracked down the My Lai story for the office of the inspector general in 1969 tells what it was like to do some of this era’s grimmest detective work.

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1619: The Year That Shaped America  | Winter 2019, Vol 64, No 1

By James Horn

Four hundred years ago this year, two momentous events happened in Britain’s fledgling colony in Virginia: the New World’s first democratic assembly convened, and an English privateer brought kidnapped Africans to sell as slaves. Such were the conflicted origins of modern America.

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A Yankee Among The War Lords | October 1970, Vol 21, No 6

By Barbara W. Tuchman

First of the Three Parts from STILWELL THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CHINA 1911-1945

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The Meaning of 1918 | Fall 2018 - World War I Special Issue, Vol 63, No 3

By John Lukacs

A century after the guns fell silent along the Western Front, the work they did there remains of incalculable importance to the age we inhabit and the people we are.

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The Man of the Century | May/June 1994, Vol 45, No 3

By Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Of all the Allied leaders, argues FDR's biographer, only Roosevelt saw clearly the shape of the new world they were fighting to create.

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    Today in History

  • USS Constitution

    USS Constitution is launched in Boston Harbor. The 1794 Naval Act authorized its construction along with five other frigates, and the USS Constitution, nicknamed "Old Ironsides", served through the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812. 

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  • Edison successfully tests incandescent light bulb

    Thomas Edison successfully tests his incandescent light bulb with a cotton carbonized filament. The light bulb would stay electrified for over 13 hours.

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  • Battle of Aachen

    American soldiers triumph at the Battle of Aachen following the surrender of 5,000 German soldiers. Aachen, along the Belgian and Dutch borders, is the first German city captured by the Americans.

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