On December 30, 1813, British troops crossed the icy Niagara River and set fire to the American village of Buffalo, New York, reducing much of the settlement to ashes and marking one of the most destructive episodes along the northern frontier during the War…
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On December 20, 1803, in a modest ceremony in New Orleans, American officials formally took possession of the Louisiana Territory, completing what would become one of the most consequential land transfers in world history: the Louisiana Purchase. With that act, the United States doubled…
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On a rainy October 28, 1886, the United States its only queen: the Statue of Liberty. The Franco-American Union and the City of New York organized the dedication ceremonies, which aimed to honor the Statue’s creators and contributors, the people of France and the…
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On the morning of October 21, 1797, the people of Boston gathered along the harbor to watch a ship—three years in the making—slip into the Atlantic. The 44-gun frigate USS Constitution rested poised on the greased ways of Edmund Hartt’s North End shipyard, its…
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When U.S. troops marched through the cobbled streets of San Juan on October 18, 1898, the red and gold flag of Spain was lowered for the last time over the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. In its place rose the Stars and Stripes, signifying…
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On October 10, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., sending an electrical signal across more than 2,000 miles that detonated dynamite charges deep in the jungles of Panama. The explosion tore through the Gamboa Dike, the last barrier separating…
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On September 17, 1787, within the revered walls of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, leaders finished the work of creating what’s been called the greatest government ever devised. After several months of intense deliberation, the framers of the United States Constitution signed a document…
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On a cool September morning in 1609, an English mariner in Dutch employ guided his ship into the mouth of a vast and unfamiliar waterway. Henry Hudson, sailing under the flag of the Dutch East India Company, had been searching in vain for a…
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When Elias Howe secured his sewing machine patent on September 10, 1846, he likely could not have imagined the waves of industrial transformation his invention would set in motion. The 27-year-old Massachusetts mechanic had spent years tinkering in obscurity, driven by a vision of…
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On a quiet Saturday morning in Chillicothe, Missouri, July 7, 1928, a local bakery began selling loaves of bread that looked radically different from anything customers had seen before. Instead of the typical unsliced loaves wrapped in wax paper or cloth, these loaves were…
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