On December 7, 1941, the United States was thrust into global war when aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sudden and meticulously coordinated attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The assault began early on a quiet Sunday morning,…
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A Woman Takes the English Public Stage: Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall as Desdemona in Othello On December 8, 1660, the English public stage witnessed a groundbreaking moment when a woman performed professionally for the first time, breaking with centuries of tradition. Historians continue…
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On December 7, 1930, viewers in the Boston area witnessed a milestone that would later become central to American broadcasting: the combination of live entertainment and commercial sponsorship on experimental television station W1XAV. Operated by the Shortwave and Television Laboratory in Boston, W1XAV was…
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On December 6, 1933, United States District Judge John M. Woolsey issued a landmark ruling in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, declaring that James Joyce’s modernist novel Ulysses was not obscene under federal law and could therefore be legally imported and sold…
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London in the 1760s was a city in the midst of profound commercial and cultural transformation. The Seven Years’ War had recently concluded, redirecting wealth and attention back toward domestic pursuits; aristocratic collections, gentlemanly libraries, and cabinets of curiosity were flourishing; and the city’s…
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In the winter of 1861, as the Union cracked under the pressure of secession and the first year of civil war drew to a close, the Confederate States of America undertook a ritual of nationhood it hoped would signal permanence. On December 4, 1861,…
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On December 3, 1775—six months after Lexington and Concord, and amid the halting, improvisational birth of a Continental Navy—the newly commissioned USS Alfred unfurled a banner no American warship had ever carried. It was not yet the “Stars and Stripes,” nor anything immediately recognizable…
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The first generation of Americans to witness commercial aviation mature from barnstorming spectacle to intercity utility could hardly miss the symbolism of December 2, 1939, when New York City formally opened its new municipal airport on the shoreline of Flushing Bay. In an era…
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On the evening of December 1, 1955, in a humid Southern city still governed by the iron routines of Jim Crow, a single act of refusal cracked the façade of segregation. Rosa Louise McCauley Parks—42 years old, a department-store seamstress, and a quiet stalwart…
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On November 30, 1999, the streets of Seattle became the unexpected epicenter of a global political confrontation. What had been planned as a polished, high-profile opening to the World Trade Organization’s Third Ministerial Conference instead unraveled into a day of lockdowns, tear gas, immobilized…
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