American History Tellers

In February 1826, 17-year-old Edgar Allan Poe was a promising student at the University of Virginia. But within a few months, gambling debts forced him to abandon his studies. It was just one...

"In the fall of 1620, the Mayflower embarked on a 3,000-mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Over the next nine weeks, its passengers and crew battled fierce storms and rampant illness. Th...

In the summer of 1807, Richmond, Virginia hosted the most sensational trial in the young nation’s history. At stake was the life of Aaron Burr, who stood accused of plotting an armed insurrec...

In August 1806, Aaron Burr began the final preparations for his mysterious expedition to the western frontier. As he traveled, rumors that he was plotting a dangerous conspiracy followed in h...

In the fall of 1906, a mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever struck a wealthy New York family vacationing in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Suspicion soon fell on the family's Irish cook, who had va...

May 19, 1649. After the English Civil War, an Act of Parliament makes England a Republic.You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or for all that and more, go to IntoHistory...

In his final year in office, President Jimmy Carter was forced to navigate crisis after crisis, as American hostages remained captive in Iran and news broke of his brother Billy’s shady deal-...

In March 1913, thousands of suffrage activists converged on Washington, D.C. for a new form of protest. They were going to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to demand an amendment to the U.S. Co...

In May 1870, James Webster Smith arrived in West Point, New York, in the hopes of becoming the first Black cadet to attend the U.S. Military Academy. While facing West Point’s famously diffic...

On January 15, 1919 a giant storage tank holding more than two million gallons of molasses collapsed, sending a deadly wave crashing into the streets of Boston’s busy North End. The flood was...

Chinese laborers did much of the toughest work building the Central Pacific Railroad. That included blasting tunnels through the granite of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to eventually connect t...

In early 1866, Central Pacific workers were stalled in California, facing the monumental task of blasting 15 tunnels through solid granite in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Thousands of Chinese...

September 16, 1920. A horse-drawn wagon explodes in the middle of New York’s financial district, killing 30 people.You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or for all that a...

In September 1901, President William McKinley visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York to deliver a speech celebrating American achievements at home and abroad. But waiting in...

On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died hours later, shocking the war-torn nation and becoming the first Presi...

June 24, 1535. A radical political uprising comes to an end when the city of Münster falls to an Bishop’s army.You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or for all that and m...

April 1, 1997. The Hale-Bopp Comet reaches the closest point to the sun on its long loop through space, presenting a magnificent spectacle to stargazers on Earth.You can listen ad-free in the...

In Spring of 1945, the tides of World War 2 turned. Germany surrendered to the Allies, but Japan vowed to keep fighting. To prevent further casualties, America knew they would have to demonst...

In the late 1850s, a young man named Samuel Clemens started out piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. Within a few years, he embarked on a writing career, adopting the pen name that b...

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire reduced the city to rubble and ash, reporters fanned out across the burning landscape. The San Francisco Chronicle, along with several other p...

In the early morning hours of April 18th, 1906, residents of San Francisco were awakened by the violent shaking of a massive earthquake. People on the streets watched in horror as entire city...

In the midst of the public hysteria surrounding the Salem Witch Trials, a respected Puritan woman named Rebecca Nurse was accused of using witchcraft to “afflict” girls in Salem. Despite her ...

In the spring of 1865, the United States celebrated the end of four years of Civil War. As American soldiers laid down their weapons, four million formerly enslaved Black people in the South ...

On December 7, 1941, Hawai’i was hit by one of the most unexpected military assaults in modern warfare. More than 300 Japanese fighter planes and dive bombers attacked the U.S. naval base at ...

In the early 1850s, as people continued to flood West, California’s booming cities experienced rapid growth, but also turmoil. Fires regularly swept through hastily erected towns, and battles...

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his presidential limo through downtown Dallas. His violent and public death became one of the most traumatic moments ...

During the Golden Age of Piracy, two female pirates became infamous despite their short careers. Anne Bonny and Mary Read went down as some of the fiercest pirates in popular mythology.. Dr. ...

In 1864, Ulysses S. Grant took charge of the entire Union Army and laid out his ambitious plans to finally win the war. Grant pursued Lee in Virginia in a campaign unrivaled in the history of...

Herbert Hoover’s management of the flood relief garnered widespread praise and put him in position to secure the Republican nomination for President. But the African-American press told a dif...

After 18 months and over two thousand miles, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery had reached the Pacific Ocean. Now, they would have to find their way back. And in a last-ditch bid for glory...

In 1803, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began a westward journey that would transform America. Their mission was to head up the Missouri River and find a route through the unchar...

On Election Day 1872, Susan B. Anthony walked into a polling place in Rochester, New York and boldly cast her ballot. Her action was an escalation in women’s fight for the vote. Days later, s...

On February 4th, 1899, war broke out between the United States and the Philippines. The two nations had begun as allies against Spain the previous year, during the Spanish-American War. The S...

The 1904 St. Louis Olympics were marred by controversy and poorly organized events like the marathon. But at least they took place as scheduled. In 1916, after the outbreak of World War I, th...

On the night of Tuesday, May 31, 1921, a violent white mob attacked the prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As the night progressed, the disorganized mob transforme...

In the 1850s, the United States was lurching toward a crisis over slavery -- and abolitionist John Brown stepped into the fray. Brown believed it was his God-given destiny to destroy slavery....

As a new century dawned on the United States, an enslaved blacksmith named Gabriel began planning a bold plot to overthrow slavery in Virginia’s capital. The uprising would change the future ...

Pulitzer Prize winner. National Book Award winner. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Today David McCullough, one of America’s greatest living historians, joins us to discuss his new bo...

We conclude our series on the American Civil Right Movement with an interview with a woman who was there, on the front lines of the fight.Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely is longtime civil righ...

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves in much of the South. But the road to freedom—true freedom—would take generations longer ...

It’s 1786. For two years the city of Philadelphia has been celebrating its independence. For citizens of this brand new country, life is parties, meetings, debates and festivals - sometimes a...

Information sharing was normal in the global scientific community, but when it came to rockets, normal rules didn’t apply. If the details got passed along to civilian scientists, there was no...