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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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  · 15 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  · 12 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  · 16 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.