HISTORY This Week

September 8, 1966. For the first time, the USS Enterprise appears on screen. It is the premiere of a strange new futuristic TV show. Star Trek will introduce the world to a cast of characters that pus...

September 2, 31 BCE. Two camps prepare for battle off the coast of Greece. On one side is Octavian, Julius Caesar’s heir apparent. On the other, Marc Antony and his lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra...

August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper ...

August 17, 1987. On the red carpet in New York City, it’s the premier of a new movie: Dirty Dancing. The story is set in the sunburnt Shangri-La of New York’s Catskills resort region. The movie will i...

August 14, 1967. Off the coast of England, a group of pirate ships has been fighting to stay afloat. These are pirates of a particular kind—less sword fighting and treasure hunting, more spinning reco...

August 6, 1991. On an Internet news board, a memo appears, describing a new project that some scientists have been developing: “The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project.” It’s meant to help ordinary people use ...

7/31/1492. In cities, towns and villages across late medieval Spain, whole districts have emptied out. Houses abandoned, stores closed, and synagogues—which until recently had been alive with singing ...

July 21, 1855. Literary lion Ralph Waldo Emerson writes a letter to an unknown Brooklyn journalist named Walt Whitman. He’s just read Whitman’s first published poems, which have both startled him and ...

July 13, 44 BCE. Julius Caesar is dead, stabbed by a trusted friend. With Rome shaken, the Senate meets to decide next steps. They're confronting the brutal power struggle already breaking out among t...

July 7, 2007. In a dramatic ceremony featuring pop stars, fireworks, and smoke canons, the Colosseum is named one of the seven new wonders of the world. It’s an appropriately over-the-top blowout for ...