American History Tellers

In 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped her enslaver in Maryland and freed herself. Over the next several years she took great personal risks, traveling back below the Mason-Dixon line at least a dozen times ...

February 19, 197 CE. Septimius Severus' victory at the Battle of Lugdunum finally establishes him as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or f...

In December 1938, a team of German physicists achieved an astonishing scientific breakthrough: they split the nucleus of a uranium atom. In the United States, news of the discovery sparked fear in the...

In Spring of 1943, hundreds of scientists and technicians moved to a remote location in the mountains of New Mexico to work at a secret laboratory. Under the guidance of their leader, J. Robert Oppenh...

In Spring of 1945, the tides of World War 2 turned. Germany surrendered to the Allies, but Japan vowed to keep fighting. To prevent further casualties, America knew they would have to demonstrate thei...

Following the success of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. sought to develop a potentially more powerful and deadly weapon – the Hydrogen Bomb. Despite having led the team at Los Alamos, J. Robert Oppen...

January 22, 1879. After years of displacement, the northern Cheyenne, led by Chief Morning Star, face off against the U.S. Army in an attempt to return to their ancestral lands. You can listen ad-free...

In February 1826, 17-year-old Edgar Allan Poe was a promising student at the University of Virginia. But within a few months, gambling debts forced him to abandon his studies. It was just one of many ...

In 1840, eight-year-old Louisa May Alcott moved to the small town of Concord, Massachusetts with her family. There, she spent her days wandering through the woods, putting on plays with her sisters, a...

In the late 1850s, a young man named Samuel Clemens started out piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. Within a few years, he embarked on a writing career, adopting the pen name that became fam...