This Week In American History

May 14   1804 One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to...

Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the and Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele, but the clearest...

May 7   1789 George Washington attended a ball a week after being sworn in as the first U.S. president. Him and Martha danced a minuet, captured in a drawing...

April 30   1789 George Washington was sworn in as the first American president and delivers the first inaugural speech at Federal Hall in New York City. Elements of the...

April 23     1961 Judy Garland performed at Carnegie Hall in what is often called “the greatest night in showbiz history." The album won the Grammy Award for Album...

April 16   1947 Multimillionaire and financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coins the term “Cold...

Easter, also called Pascha or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred...

April 9 1865 In Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Robert E. Lee surrendered his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond,...

April 2   1917 Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, took her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana. She successfully ran for...

March 26   1951 President Harry S. Truman officially adopted the United States Air Force flag. Unchanged since 1951, the flag consists of the coat of arms, 13 white stars...

March 19   1931 In an attempt to lift the state out of the hard times of the Great Depression, the Nevada state legislature voted to legalize gambling. At the...

March 12   1894 Coca-Cola was sold in glass bottles for the first time by Joseph A. Biedenharn, owner of a candy store in Vicksburg, Mississippi. While only a fountain...