Tag Archives: U.S. History

Whoa. The Guardian reports: A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima. The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under …

Liberal icon George McGovern has died in his home state of South Dakota at the age of 90.  McGovern is perhaps best remembered for his vehement opposition to the Vietnam War. A three-term U.S. senator from South Dakota, McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. His hard-fought campaign against Nixon and the war in Southeast Asia attracted millions of …

The Mormon Church-affiliated genealogy site Ancestry.com today made the claim that they have traced President Obama’s ancestry back to the very first documented slave in what would become the United States. That’s fascinating on its face, but the more interesting wrinkle here is that the connection is made through Obama’s white mother. Research derived by Ancestry.com from early Virginia records …

He’s clearly studied with David Barton.

Dubya, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, Wall Street. TIME Magazine gets it right when they call the aughties “the decade from hell.” Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World …

…for the first time ever.