U.S. History
How Dangerous Was the Oregon Trail, Really?
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Article
The Oregon Trail has long occupied a special place in the American imagination — a fascination boosted by the popular Oregon Trail computer game, where players regularly suffered from dysentery, snakebites, and broken wagon axles. The real journey west was every bit as grueling — but not always for the reasons popular culture suggests. An estimated 350,000 people traveled the Oregon Trail and similar overland routes between the early 1840s and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Historians estimate that at least 20,000 of them died along the way, making the route what the ...Read More
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U.S. HistoryArticle535 Eye-Opening Facts About the Dust Bowl
Although the Great Depression was a challenging time for most Americans, a special distinction can be made for those who weathered the unique conditions of the Dust Bowl. Generally encompassing…
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U.S. HistoryFact29Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the U.S. capital for one day.
Washington, D.C., was officially established as the U.S. capital on July 16, 1790, when the Residence Act moved it from Philadelphia. The capital had moved a few other times during…
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U.S. HistoryArticle63What Did U.S. Money Look Like in the 1800s?
While the Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States Mint and the dollar as the unit of currency for the fledgling nation, it was quite some time before a…
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U.S. HistoryArticle94How the Postal Service Created the ZIP Code
Even with the decline of letter writing in the digital age, the ZIP code remains an American institution, a neat five-digit number that caps an address and, like an area…
