American History Tellers

November 20, 1992. After a year of bad press for Britain's royals, Windsor castle catches fire, raising questions about the cost and future of the British monarchy. You can listen ad-free in the Wond...

In January 1692, two young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts began behaving strangely. They screamed, barked like dogs, and writhed on the floor. A doctor concluded that the girls had been bewitch...

By the first week of March 1692, three Salem women had been jailed for witchcraft, and accusations continued to spread. Authorities publicly questioned people suspected of witchcraft, turning legal pr...

In May 1692, William Phips, the new royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sailed into Boston Harbor and was immediately faced with an unprecedented crisis. The colony was in the throes of a ...

By September 1692, the witch panic in Salem, Massachusetts had sent 11 women and men to the gallows. Dozens more languished in jail awaiting trial.But that fall, growing public doubt began to cast a s...

In the midst of the public hysteria surrounding the Salem Witch Trials, a respected Puritan woman named Rebecca Nurse was accused of using witchcraft to “afflict” girls in Salem. Despite her status as...

October 16, 1869. An American trickster masterminds the discovery of a mysterious petrified giant in upstate New York. You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or for all that and m...

On December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese warplanes rained death and destruction down on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor—shocking the nation and drawing it into World War II. The U.S. had been rav...

As the nation’s factories and shipyards ramped up production for the war, the demand for labor exploded. Millions of women and minorities entered the workforce for the first time, finding a path to pr...

After the War of Independence, the new American government created the Supreme Court to be the final word on disputes that the states couldn’t settle. But at first, the Court was anything but Supreme....