A pear seedling selection named Bradford was cloned by the gazillion to become the ubiquitous street tree of America’s postwar suburban expansion. Then it turned invasive. By Adrian Higgins.

Two Civil War words tend to bring everyone’s blood to the boiling point: George McClellan.

In most cases, often for legal reasons and fear of reprisals from unions, industry officials denied the existence of a formal blacklist. Instead, the entertainment industries relied on lists compiled by such private citizen groups as… By Richard A. Schwartz.

The world of invention is famous for its patent disputes. But what happens when your dispute wasn’t with another inventor but whether the Patent Office saw you as a person at all? In 1864, a black man named Benjamin T. Montgomery tried to patent his new propeller for steamboats. The Patent Office said that he wasn’t allowed to patent his invention. All because he was enslaved.

Some presidential estates and other historical sites have struggled to reconcile founding-era exceptionalism with the true story of America’s original sin.

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Starting in the 1940s, Indian immigrants built a hospitality industry that their children and grandchildren have turned into an empire.

Grievously wounded in body and spirit, the Army of Northern Virginia limped painfully away from Gettysburg while Union commander George Gordon Meade followed slowly -- too slowly, thought Abraham Lincoln.

150 years ago today, the author's forbear survived one of the bloodiest failed assaults of the Civil War

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger stunned the nation when it broke apart 73 seconds into flight. This is the story of the soccer ball that survived -- and the family that sent it into space, twice.

A 40-person team digging into the cold case says they used a “confession” from the 1970s to finger a former CIA agent living in San Diego...

William Wyler

Civil War drummers were a critical part of the army. Here are five things you should know about them.

An illiterate North Carolina soldier paid the ultimate price for deserting the Confederate state

G.J. Meyer, author of The World Remade, joins Signature to discuss a time in American history, during WWI, when censorship was the rule of the land.

Where would a bicyclist find "witness trees" at Gettysburg? This article offers a map, photos, and how-to directions. Do you love the idea of learning American History while exploring civil war battlefields on a bicycle? If so, this site is for you!

Learn more about the Battle of Fort Wagner and the role that the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry played in that important attack in 1863.

A writer and former neighbor is still trying to put the pieces together

It is sad for our country that this is happening. It's even sadder that it has barely been talked about. By Vincent David Johnson.

African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather.

Did the Stars and Stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?

With a massive budget from its insurance activities and its policy emphasis on industrial-scale farming, the Iowa Farm Bureau isn't helping rural communities. By Austin Frerick.

An amateur researcher, she discovered evidence that evacuating Japanese-Americans was motivated by “race prejudice,” not by military necessity.

Over two years, Ed Pilkington has interviewed eight African American radicals imprisoned since the 1970s. Will they ever be freed?

In December 2014, Max Brown was picking through an Incline Village dumpster for a community service project when a collection of 1980s cassettes caught his eye. Fancying himself a collector, he pulled them out and inspected them. 

A response to Gil Sewall's critique of the left-wing professor earlier this month. By David Masciotra.

As the United States celebrates the centennial of the 19th Amendment, it’s vital to remember that some of its heroes were less than heroic.

Build more walls!

Ray McGovern

A new documentary looks at Montana's fight against dark money in politics. By Bob Garfield with director Kimberly Reed.

Looking back on Shays’ Rebellion. By David Black.

The 155th anniversary Gettysburg re-enactment was a snapshot of a hobby with dwindling ranks.

Hazel Scott was a piano prodigy who wowed the worlds of music, TV and film. But when she stood up for her rights, the establishment took her down. By Lorissa Rinehart.

This chart, digitized by the Library of Congress, depicts major battles, troop losses, skirmishes, and other events in the American Civil War....The “Scaife Synoptical Method,” advertised at the top of the timeline, aimed to fit as much information as possible into a single chart.