R American History

25 Years Ago Today: The Waco Siege

Waco Siege, April 1993 Twenty-five years ago today, federal law enforcement wrote a dark chapter in American history. On April 19, 1993, FBI agents used tanks to batter holes and shoot tear gas into David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound following a 51-day siege. The assault left 80 followers dead, including 25 children. The Branch Davidians, a radical offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist…

50 Years Ago: MLK’s Death and the D.C. Uprising

Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while visiting Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers.  King’s death rippled throughout urban America with riots in Baltimore, Chicago and Kansas City. However, the civil strife in Washington, D.C. lasted from April 4-8, leaving 13 people dead, nearly 1,200 buildings destroyed, and tens of millions of dollars in damage. The…

The Tragic Story of the Man Who Tried to Stop John Wilkes Booth

Major Rathbone attempted to stop Booth before he fled Ford’s Theatre On April 14, 1865, American history changed forever.  President Abraham Lincoln was gunned down by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre, just blocks from the White House. Booth jumped from the presidential box, yelled “sic semper tyrannis” and fled with a broken leg while Lincoln lay dying. Unfortunately, very few know about…

The Irish Invasion of Canada

The United States has a strong connection to Ireland. Roughly 33 million Americans claim Irish heritage, while only 6.4 million people live there today. During the mid-19th Century, while famine and British oppression ravaged Ireland, a great number of Irish families immigrated to the United States, creating the strong Irish-American heritage we celebrate today. After failing to overthrow British…

Nuclear Deterrence with General Curtis LeMay

The crisis on the Korean peninsula has highlighted the precarious and dangerous nature of dealing with nuclear weapons. Throughout the Cold War, America lived under a nuclear threat that could ratchet up under the slightest provocation. Fortunately, the lessons learned have helped avoid a catastrophic situation, thus far. This wasn’t always the case, especially in the early post-World War II…

35 Years Ago Today, President Reagan Made his ‘Evil Empire Speech’

 President Ronald Reagan addressing the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983. (Photo by Diana Walker/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) With military incursions into Ukraine, Syria and Georgia, as well as election interference in the United States and Europe, Russia has aggressively asserted itself in the geopolitical world again. President Vladimir Putin has killed dissidents, rigged…

Prior to Boss Shepherd, Washington, D.C. was not a pleasant place to live. Major roads were unpaved, sewer lines were scarce, and Congress kept threatening to move. Shepherd helped reinvent our nation's capital into a world class city.