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News

New York Stock Exchange Opens First Headquarters: On This Day, January 4, 1865

On January 4, 1865, the New York Stock Exchange opened for business in its first permanent headquarters on Broad Street. The Exchange had formally existed since 1792, but had operated out of a series of packed Wall Street coffee...

Interactive

Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era

Economics, Government and Civics

This series of online exhibitions explores the importance of Alexander Hamilton to the founding of the United States. Each mini-exhibition features locations where Alexander Hamilton made history and documents written by or about him...

News

"Big Three" Meet at Potsdam: On This Day, July 17

The Potsdam Conference, which began on July 17, 1945, was the third meeting of the " Big Three, " after Tehran and Yalta, to address the waging of WWII. But this time the cast was different, FDR’s death thrusting Harry Truman into the...

News

First All-Black Regiment Authorized: On This Day, 1863

African Americans have served in every conflict in United States history, beginning with the American Revolution. However, it was not until the Civil War, and the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, that free African American...

News

How Sideburns Got Their Name

Either you love ’em or you hate ’em. Everyone has an opinion on sideburns, and few fashion choices provoke quite so much controversy. Yet sideburns have a rich history that can be appreciated by supporters and detractors alike....

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Christmas in Kuwait, 1990

Geography, World History

Cpl. Brett G. Coughlin arrived with Delta Company in Saudi Arabia at the port of Al Jubail on September 13, 1990. For the next three months the company trained in the northern desert of Saudi Arabia. By Christmas, its headquarters...

Lesson Plan

Surveying Land

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

K, 1, 2, 3

Introduction During the time of the American Revolution, much of the land in the colonies was not mapped. In his early years, George Washington was a surveyor and measured land to figure out the location of property. Materials Rope or...

Video

America before Columbus

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Charles Mann’s book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (Knopf, 2005) won the US National Academy of Sciences’ 2006 Keck Award for the best book of the year. In this lecture he looks at new research on pre-Columbian...

News

Respected General turns traitor, 1780

Benedict Arnold, whose name is now synonymous with the word "traitor," was once a well-respected American officer responsible for key victories at Fort Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Fort Stanwix, and Saratoga. Arnold’s contemporaries were...

News

National Poetry Month, Part 4: WWI Poems

In 1918, Ella Osborn, an American nurse serving in France at the close of WWI, copied two poems into her personal diary : "In Flanders Fields," written in 1915 by Canadian surgeon Lt. Col. John D. McCrae, and "The Answer," a response...