American History Tellers

In the late-1890s, two brothers from Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright, became obsessed with what Wilbur described as “the problem of flight.” With no formal training or funding, they threw themselves i...

By 1903, inventors and adventurers in Britain and France were launching their own experimental aircraft skyward. In the U.S., crowds gathered outside Washington, D.C. to see Samuel Langley of the Smit...

In the summer of 1908, Wilbur Wright amazed crowds in France with his aerobatic flying demonstrations, and Orville made daring flights at a U.S. Army base in Virginia. The press in Europe and America ...

Before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk in December 1903, other air enthusiasts had tried to find the answer to powered, controlled human flight. And once Wilbur and Orvill...

January 13, 1842. William Brydon is the last man standing after a disastrous British army retreat during the First Anglo-Afghan War. You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or for a...

January 27, 1944. Soviet forces defeat the German army outside Leningrad, ending an 872-day siege. You can listen ad-free in the Wondery or Amazon Music app. Or for all that and more, go to IntoHisto...

On January 15, 1919 a giant storage tank holding more than two million gallons of molasses collapsed, sending a deadly wave crashing into the streets of Boston’s busy North End. The flood was over in ...

December 30, 1941. In a rousing speech to the Canadian Parliament, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill celebrates his success in holding off Nazi Germany in the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Y...

Great Britain and the United States have always enjoyed a special bond, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the friendship between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Win...

In October 1860, railroad engineer Theodore Judah looked out across California’s Sierra Nevada range, dreaming of a railroad that would connect the United States from coast to coast. It was the start ...