On September 18, 1850, the United States Congress passed and President Millard Fillmore signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, one of the most divisive and consequential pieces of legislation in American history. As part of the Compromise of 1850—a fragile political…
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On September 17, 1862, the rolling fields and cornrows along Antietam Creek bore witness to the single bloodiest day in American military history. George B. McClellan’s Union Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia clashed in a desperate struggle…
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They say that as GM goes, so goes America. The story of GM began in 1907 when William Durant “received a phone call about a large automobile merger put together by financier J.P. Morgan. Weeks later, Durant held a meeting in his room at…
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Pope Honorius I, who served as the Bishop of Rome from 625 to 638, remains a figure of significant controversy in the history of the Catholic Church due to his posthumous excommunication by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. This unusual and dramatic event, which took…
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On September 16, 1776, the morning broke with British horns sounding not the call to arms, but the mockery of a fox-hunt. From the wooded ridges above Harlem, George Washington’s battered Continentals listened to the taunt. For weeks they had known only retreat —…
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As the sun rose over Russia on September 15, 1812, Napoleon had already begun his ride to set up his headquarters in the Kremlin. The French Empire had made the long march to Moscow. “He would have passed through a beautiful city described as…
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On September 15, 1954, one of the most iconic moments in film history was captured on the streets of New York City—Marilyn Monroe’s famous skirt-blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch. This scene, where Monroe’s white dress billows up as she stands over a…
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The morning of September 15, 2008, began with the unthinkable: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the storied Wall Street firm that had survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, and two world wars, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. With more than $600 billion in…
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On September 14, 1814, the gray half-light of dawn, after a night of fire and thunder, the smoke parted over Fort McHenry to reveal what the British had failed to erase. The flag—thirty by forty-two feet, stitched in Baltimore only weeks earlier—still flew defiantly…
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On September 14, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt truly became “the man in the arena” after the death of his predecessor, William McKinley. The assassination of President William McKinley on September 6, 1901, in Buffalo, New York, marked a tragic and pivotal moment in American history.…
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