It's mid-March 2020 and chances are you're listening to this episode from the comfort of your home as you practice social distancing. Over the past few weeks many schools and businesses has suspended public operations and tr…
Dr. Ron Grim has been a geographer for over 40 years. After receiving his PhD from the University of Maryland, Ron embarked on a career that included stops at the National Archives of the United States , the Library of Congr…
On the morning of November 1, 1755, a devastating earthquake struck the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. The quake leveled buildings, triggered fires, and caused a tsunami that laid waste to the urban landscape. When it was all…
In 1784, Revolutionary War veteran Samuel Shaw set sail on the Empress of China destined for the city of Canton, or Guangzhou, in southern China. Shaw was a Boston native who served under Major General Henry Knox during the …
Like many folks around the country, you might have spent the last three evenings watching Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Washington documentary series on the History Channel. Documentaries are a form of public history, which we migh…
When the British defeated the French and their allies in the Seven Years’ War, they acquired vast new territories that expanded British America. Britain’s North America Empire grew to include New Brunswick in Canada, Florida…
The modern biography as we know it dates to the eighteenth century when Scottish author and lawyer James Boswell published The Life of Samuel Johnson . Boswell produced an account of the rascally Englishman, a friend of his …
In May 1796, Ona Judge , Martha Washington’s enslaved maidservant, freed herself by walking out of the Washington’s Philadelphia home. She had learned that Martha intended to give her away as a wedding present to Elizabeth P…
In late 1777, George Washington’s disappointing performance as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army was a source of growing concern among some army officers and members of Congress. While he had won important victories…
When George Washington died in December 1799, it changed Martha Washington’s legal status. Just as she did when she was widowed for the first time in 1757, Martha once again became an independent person in the eyes of the la…
This episode originally aired in June 2019. Once the United States achieved its independence, how did white Americans expect to educate the new republic's youth? How did questions about education become a flash point in the …
Early Americans like George Washington obsessed over genealogy. Much was at stake. One's place on the family tree could mean the difference between inheriting a plantation like Mount Vernon and its enslaved community, or wor…