America250 — 250 years since 1776. Explore two and a half centuries of American history. Start the tour
History, connected.
Timelines, ordered lists, and explainers that pull the encyclopedia together — each guide links straight to the full entries.
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Timeline  · 25 entries
The Colonial Settlements: Who Settled Where, and Why
Spain, England, the Dutch Republic, and Sweden all put colonies on the same coast — and wanted entirely different things from it.
Timeline  · 30 entries
American Art and Architecture: From the Hudson Valley to the Skyscraper
How a country that imported its taste spent three centuries arguing its way to an art of its own.
Timeline  · 28 entries
A Brief History of American Food
Indigenous crops, forced labor, immigrant kitchens, and the industry that made a continental diet.
Timeline  · 27 entries
Medical Breakthroughs That Changed America
The inventions, drugs, and machines that rebuilt American medicine — and the argument over who gets them.
Timeline  · 28 entries
How America Built Up: Skyscrapers, Bridges, and Dams
The steel frame, the height race, the long spans, and the federal concrete that reshaped a continent.
Timeline  · 24 entries
How America Got Electricity
From gaslight to the grid — the inventors, the currents, the wires, and the country they rebuilt.
Timeline  · 26 entries
The Road to Revolution: How America Escalated to War, 1763-1775
Twelve years of measure and countermeasure, from the Proclamation Line to the Proclamation of Rebellion.
Timeline  · 28 entries
The American Empire: How the United States Acquired an Overseas Domain
From the war with Spain in 1898 to the purchase of the Virgin Islands in 1917, and the argument about all of it.
Timeline  · 30 entries
American Music: Blues, Jazz, and the Sound of a Country
How African rhythm, European song, and the segregated South produced the world's popular music.
Guide  · 25 entries
The Roaring Twenties: Boom, Prohibition, and the Decade That Made Modern America
How a single decade gave America cars, radio, jazz, closed borders, and a crash.
Timeline  · 25 entries
The Progressive Era: Reformers, Trust-Busters, and the Remaking of American Government
How reformers used government power to tame the Gilded Age's excesses, 1900 to 1920.
Guide  · 30 entries
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War
The twelve years that rewrote the Constitution — and the backlash that undid the promise.
Timeline  · 15 entries
The Women's Suffrage Movement
Seventy-two years from a parlor convention in upstate New York to a constitutional amendment — the fight for the vote, step by step.
Guide  · 36 entries
The Constitutional Amendments, Explained
All twenty-seven amendments to the U.S. Constitution — plus the famous ones that failed — from the Bill of Rights to the pay raise that took 202 years to ratify.
Timeline  · 16 entries
The Vietnam War Explained
How a Cold War theory pulled America into its longest 20th-century war — and what it cost at home.
List  · 17 entries
America's Worst Disasters in History
The fires, floods, plagues, and attacks that killed the most Americans — and the reforms each one forced.
Guide  · 15 entries
The Presidential Libraries, Explained
From FDR's gift at Hyde Park to Obama's digital center in Chicago — a guide to the archives and museums that keep the records of the modern presidency.
Guide  · 19 entries
American National Symbols, Explained
The flag, the eagle, the bell, the anthem, and the holidays — where the emblems of the United States came from and what they mean.
Timeline  · 20 entries
The Great Depression and the New Deal
How the worst economic collapse in American history remade the relationship between citizens and their government.
List  · 9 entries
Assassinations in American History
Four presidents killed in office, the leaders lost in the 1960s, and the attempts that nearly changed everything.
Guide  · 36 entries
The Gilded Age: Robber Barons, Reformers, and the Making of Modern America
The era of steel, strikes, and staggering fortunes — how the United States industrialized, and who paid for it.
Timeline  · 22 entries
World War II: The American Story
How a country determined to stay out of the war emerged from it the most powerful nation on earth.
Guide  · 39 entries
Westward Expansion: Explorers, Events, and Turning Points
How the United States grew from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific — the purchases, trails, and wars that filled the map, and the nations they displaced.
List  · 11 entries
Founding Documents of the United States, Explained
The texts that argued a nation into being — from a shipboard compact to the Bill of Rights, in the order they were written.
Guide  · 17 entries
Women's Rights in America: Suffrage, Liberation, and the Fight for Equality
Two centuries of struggle to extend the founding promise of equality to half the nation — the vote, the workplace, and the body.
Guide  · 20 entries
America's Worst Disasters: Fire, Flood, Plague, and Catastrophe
The fires, floods, hurricanes, epidemics, and failures that marked American history — and the reforms they forced.
Guide  · 11 entries
Boom and Bust: A History of American Financial Panics and Crashes
The recurring crashes that have shaped the American economy — from the 19th-century panics to the Great Depression and 2008.
Guide  · 9 entries
The Space Race: How America Reached the Moon
From a beeping Soviet satellite to a bootprint on the moon — the Cold War contest that became humanity's greatest adventure.
Guide  · 26 entries
American Media: From the Penny Press to the Feed
How the nation learned to talk to itself — the press, the broadcast age, and the digital revolution that upended them all.
Guide  · 10 entries
The Automobile: How the Car Remade America
The machine that put a nation on wheels — the men and methods that built it, the roads it demanded, and the country it reshaped.
Guide  · 14 entries
American Intelligence and Espionage: Spies, Agencies, and Secrets
The secret half of American power — the agencies that spy and protect, the spies who betrayed, and the leaks that exposed them.
Guide  · 13 entries
The U.S. Military: Forts, Academies, and American Armed Power
Not the battles, but the institutions behind them — the forts, the academies, the command, and the weapons that built American military power.
Guide  · 21 entries
Native American History: Sovereign Nations, Removal, and Survival
The continent's first and oldest story — the nations who were here, the wars and removals they endured, and how they survived.
Guide  · 24 entries
Slavery and Abolition: Bondage, Resistance, and the Road to Freedom
The institution that shaped the nation from its founding — and the long, hard struggle to end it.
Guide  · 19 entries
American Invention: How the United States Built the Modern World
From the cotton gin to the transistor — the breakthroughs that remade the economy, daily life, and the world.
Guide  · 17 entries
The American Labor Movement: Strikes, Unions, and the Fight for the Worker
A century of struggle over the most basic questions of work — hours, wages, safety, and the right to organize at all.
Guide  · 10 entries
Sports That Changed America: Barriers, Icons, and the Cold War on Ice
The games where the country worked out its biggest fights — over race, over gender, and with its rivals abroad.
Guide  · 13 entries
Immigration to America: Gateways, Quotas, and the Making of a Nation
Four centuries of newcomers — the gates that opened, the doors that slammed shut, and the law that opened them again.
Guide  · 5 entries
America and Spain: Empire, Florida, and 1898
The empire that settled half the continent before the United States existed — and the war that ended its reach in the Americas.
Guide  · 7 entries
America and China: Exclusion, Cold War, and Rapprochement
From the immigrants America shut out to the rival it now measures itself against — a relationship of trade, war, and wary respect.
Guide  · 12 entries
America and France: War, Alliance, and Louisiana
The oldest ally — the nation that helped win American independence, sold it a third of a continent, and gave it the Statue of Liberty.
Guide  · 16 entries
America and Britain: From Mother Country to Special Relationship
The empire America rebelled against became, in time, its closest ally — a reversal that took two wars and two centuries.
Guide  · 12 entries
America and Mexico: Texas, the War, and the Border
Two neighbors whose shared border was drawn not by treaty alone but by revolution, war, and the conquest of half a country.
Guide  · 18 entries
America and Russia: From the Alaska Purchase to the Cold War
Two centuries in which the United States bought a territory from Russia, then spent half a century one miscalculation away from war with it.
Timeline  · 24 entries
The Complete Timeline of American History
From first European contact to the present — the events, documents, and turning points that built the United States, in order.
List  · 10 entries
Great American Speeches
Ten speeches that moved the country — what was said, who said it, and why it still echoes.
List  · 13 entries
The 13 Colonies: A Guide to Each One
The thirteen British colonies that became the United States — grouped by region, with how each was founded.
Timeline  · 14 entries
Every Major Battle of the American Revolution
From the first shots at Lexington to the surrender at Yorktown — the battles that won American independence, in order.
List  · 13 entries
Landmark Supreme Court Cases That Shaped America
Thirteen decisions that defined American rights, the reach of federal power, and the role of the Court itself.
Timeline  · 19 entries
The Cold War: A Complete Timeline
Four decades of standoff with the Soviet Union — from the Iron Curtain to the brink of nuclear war and back.
Timeline  · 21 entries
The Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Leaders, and Turning Points
The struggle to dismantle segregation — its roots, its leaders, the campaigns that forced change, and the laws that followed.
Guide  · 25 entries
The Civil War: Causes, Battles, and Key Figures
The conflict that ended slavery and remade the nation — what caused it, how it was fought, and who fought it.
Explainer  · 9 entries
The Declaration of Independence: Who Wrote It and What It Means
America's founding statement — who drafted it, what it actually argues, and why July 4, 1776 still matters.
List  · 15 entries
The Founding Fathers: Who They Were and What They Did
The men who declared independence, won the war, and wrote the rules — and what each one actually did.
List  · 24 entries
Every U.S. War and Major Conflict, Explained
From the French and Indian War to the present — the conflicts that built, broke, and remade the United States, in order.
List  · 45 entries
U.S. Presidents in Order
All 47 presidencies and the 45 people who held them — from Washington to the present, in order.
Timeline  · 13 entries
The American Revolution: A Complete Timeline
From the first colonial grievances to the Treaty of Paris — the road to independence, year by year.