American History Tellers

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....

In the early 1800s, the United States was growing rapidly, seeking land and resources for its expanding population. But the growth threatened Native American communities throughout the East. In the so...

After the Civil War, America began to rebuild a shattered nation. For the first time, the country could create a society without slavery, and a nation where Black people could forge their own path as ...

Through most of 1941, as fighting raged across Europe, the United States held back from entering the war. That all changed in December, when Japanese fighter planes bombed Pearl Harbor and the nation ...