This Week In American History

August 18 1590 John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony in present-day North Carolina, returned from a supply-trip to England to find the settlement deserted. White and his men...

August 11 1934 A group of federal prisoners classified as “most dangerous” arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay. The convicts—the first civilian...

August 4 1753 George Washington, a young Virginia planter, became a Master Mason, the highest basic rank in the secret fraternity of Freemasonry. The ceremony was held at the Masonic...

July 28 1868 Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly enslaved people—was...

July 21 1861 In the first major battle of the Civil War, Confederate forces defeated the Union Army along Bull Run near Manassas Junction, Virginia. The battle became known as Manassas by...

July 14 1951 The George Washington Carver National Monument in Joplin, Missouri was founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who donated $30,000 to the monument. It was the first national monument...

July 7 1930 Construction of the Hoover Dam began. Over the next five years, a total of 21,000 men would work ceaselessly to produce what would be the largest dam...

June 30 1936 Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, one of the best-selling novels of all time and the basis for a blockbuster 1939 movie was published. In tracing Scarlett O'Hara's...

June 23 1972 Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on...

June 16 1884 The first roller coaster in American opened at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. Known as a Switchback Railway, it traveled six miles per hour and cost...

June 9   1772 In an incident regarded as the first naval engagement of the American Revolution John Brown, an American merchant angered by high British taxes on his goods, and...

June 2    1886 President Grover Cleveland became the first sitting president to marry in the White House when he married Frances Folsom, a young woman 27 years his junior....