For most of American history, presidents did not have Secret Service code names. They didn’t need them. There was no radio chatter to encrypt, no transcontinental motorcade calls to obscure, no telephone network through... Read More →
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 leftmost column of names on the Declaration of Independence belongs to Georgia. New Hampshire is over on the right, John Hancock sits alone in the middle underneath the text in no column at... Read More →
The first American presidency started late because of the weather. The Confederation Congress had scheduled the inauguration for the first Wednesday in March 1789, and then, in the National Archives’ own account, “the early... Read More →
There is a painting in the Capitol Rotunda, twelve feet by eighteen, that shows neither a battle nor a signing. John Trumbull’s ’General George Washington Resigning His Commission,’ painted between 1822 and 1824, catches... Read More →
On January 24, 1801, weeks from the end of his presidency, John Adams wrote to a Quaker correspondent named George Churchman and set down a sentence almost none of the men around him could... Read More →
William Henry Harrison died at the White House on 4 April 1841, the first of the presidents to die in office, and in dying he exposed a sentence nobody had read carefully enough. The... Read More →
Before joining the United States, four states existed as fully independent nations. One was a kingdom recognized by Europe. One fought a war for independence. One governed itself for 14 years while America refused to acknowledge it. And one declared independence on a Tuesday and was gone before the month ended. Read More →
Before Washington, D.C., America's capital bounced between nine different cities—fleeing British troops, mutinous soldiers, and deadly yellow fever epidemics. Here's every city that hosted the U.S. government. 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 →
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