The catafalque on which most of these caskets rested was hammered together in five days in April 1865, out of rough pine boards covered in black cloth, to support the body of Abraham Lincoln.... Read More →
The office of the American presidency was invented on the fly. In 1787, the founders sat in Philadelphia arguing about whether the executive should be a single person or a committee of three. They... Read More →
Twelve men who sat in the Oval Office first gave orders on a battlefield. Some commanded armies that changed the course of history. Others held the rank in name only, their “generalship” a political... Read More →
Twelve of the first eighteen American presidents owned enslaved people at some point in their lives. Eight of them owned enslaved people while actively serving as president. They presided over a nation founded on... Read More →
The Vice Presidency has always been a strange job. You're one heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world, but nobody voted for you to have it. Nine times in American history,... Read More →
Eight American presidents died in office—four by assassination, four from illness. From live snake remedies to mistresses at deathbeds, here's every president who never made it out of the White House alive. Read More →
Ask most Americans who the first president was, and they'll confidently say George Washington. They're wrong-sort of. Before Washington took the oath of office in 1789, fourteen men held the title "President of the... Read More →
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