A tense standoff with the Teton Sioux nearly ended the expedition

Lewis and Clark encountered more than 70 Native tribes during their journey

The Corps of Discovery’s diplomacy ranged from peaceful trade and vital aid from tribes like the Shoshone and Nez Perce to tense standoffs, most notably with the Teton Sioux, who nearly brought the expedition to a halt.

The US Army massacred close to 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in 1890

Fearing the Ghost Dance—a spiritual movement spreading across starving reservations—the Army surrounded a Lakota encampment at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. When a shot was fired during an attempted disarmament, it sparked chaos, and soldiers killed nearly 300 people.

Sacagawea reunited with her brother during the trip and secured horses for the Corps

Sacagawea, who was captured by another tribe at age 12, discovered during the journey that the Shoshone chief was her brother, Cameahwait. Their reunion led to the Corps obtaining vital horses and guides for the treacherous mountain crossing ahead.

The Corps brought along an estimated 120 gallons of whiskey

To help them through the arduous trek, the Corps of Discovery brought the whiskey alongside wine, brandy, and rum for morale, trade, and medicinal use. Early on in the expedition, the adventurers reported frequent drunkenness.

One Native leader tried to save his people's land by building a nation

As the US pushed westward in the 19th century, one leader of the Ojibwe people fought back not with arms but with politics, seeking to preserve his people's territory and way of life by building a formal Native nation capable of negotiating on equal footing with the US government.

The Standing Rock Sioux led a nationwide protest movement against an oil pipeline crossing their land

Beginning in 2016, thousands gathered at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to block a crude oil pipeline that would run beneath Lake Oahe, the tribe's source of drinking water, and through a Sioux burial ground. The Obama administration halted construction, but Trump revived it weeks after taking office.

Pontiac's Rebellion prompted Britain to draw a line between colonists and Native lands in 1763

After the French and Indian War, a coalition of Indigenous nations—led by Odawa leader Pontiac—launched a major uprising against British forts. In response, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which reserved lands west of the Appalachian Mountains for Native peoples.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans

Signed by President Andrew Jackson, the act authorized the federal government to negotiate treaties relocating Native nations from their Southeastern homelands to lands west of the Mississippi, often by force.

Montana's Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School was home to a world champion girls' basketball team

In 1904, the school, featuring players from multiple tribes in Montana and Idaho, won the championship at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (also known as the St. Louis World Fair).

The American missionary and the uncontacted tribe

When a 26-year-old American missionary set out for a lush island in the Indian Ocean last year, it was with one objective in mind: to convert the uncontacted Sentinelese tribe, who had lived for centuries in isolation, free from modern technology, disease, and religion. John Chau's mission had ambitions for a great awakening, but what awaited instead was tragedy.

In the 1950s, the federal government tried to dissolve tribal nations and end their sovereignty

A federal policy called "termination" withdrew official recognition from more than 100 tribes in the 1950s, cutting off federal services and subjecting reservation land to state taxes and sale.

The Missouri Compromise temporarily eased tensions over slavery's expansion

Passed in 1820, the Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state—maintaining the fragile balance between proslavery and antislavery states in Congress. It also banned slavery north of latitude 36°30′.

The Aztec capital fell after a brutal 75-day siege

The violent Spanish conquest ended with a 75-day siege of Tenochtitlan, where thousands died as Spanish forces and their Indigenous allies overwhelmed the city of 200,000. This animated explainer breaks down how those alliances enabled the empire’s collapse.

A riveting retelling of the 1846 Donner Party, the doomed western pioneers

Eighty-one people went with the Donner Party into the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846 via what they thought would be a shortcut to the West. Only 41 came out. The infamous episode of Western travel is captured in narrative detail in this four-part podcast series. This first episode reveals the motivations that pushed the party on this specific route.

Native students fought back against forced assimilation at US boarding schools

Despite harsh conditions, Native American students preserved their identities by secretly speaking their languages, maintaining cultural practices, and, in some cases, running away.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Squanto was a tragic character in the original Thanksgiving story

Tisquantum (also known as Squanto) played a crucial role in the survival of the Pilgrims. As an English speaker, Squanto assisted the Pilgrims in gathering food and communicating with other Native peoples. However, his story also involved being sold into slavery by an English sea captain and returning home to find his tribe decimated by disease during the Great Dying. Tisquantum met his end not long after that first Thanksgiving, with historians speculating he died either by disease or assassination.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The disputed 1876 Presidential election accelerated the end of Reconstruction

The 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden ended in a deadlock over contested Southern votes. To resolve the crisis, Democrats accepted Hayes's presidency in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops—formally ending Reconstruction.

Mark Twain once challenged a rival newspaper editor to a duel

While writing for a newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada, Twain published a story about a local fundraiser, accusing the paper’s rival of rescinding their donation. The problem was that the story was untrue: It was a hoax that he had concocted while drunk. The affair led to a protracted, public back-and-forth, with Twain challenging the editor of the rival paper to a duel; likewise, two other men challenged Twain to a duel. Twain ultimately left town, but wrote about the episode later on in an essay titled “How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel.”

The Bone Wars turned paleontology into a rivalry fraught with public scandal

Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were friends-turned-enemies competing for the glory of discovering dinosaurs. It became so intense that when Cope died, he donated his body to science to prove he had a bigger brain than Marsh.

A downed Japanese pilot sparked a violent three-day standoff on the island of Niʻihau

After a Japanese pilot crash-landed on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau, residents first sheltered him. Once news of the Pearl Harbor attack arrived, two locals tried to help him escape, leading to a violent struggle in which Native Hawaiians ultimately stopped and killed him.

Manifest destiny fueled US aggression against Mexico

The belief that the United States had a divine right to expand westward—known as manifest destiny—justified President Polk’s push for territorial conquest. It shaped public support for the Mexican-American War and framed the invasion as national destiny.

Dolley Madison rescued George Washington's portrait before the White House burned

As British troops approached in August 1814, first lady Dolley Madison ordered Gilbert Stuart's full-length portrait of George Washington removed from the White House, which remains displayed in the building today. She also secured key state papers and valuables before fleeing.

A Thomas Moran painting inspired Yellowstone National Park

The 1872 painting provided viewers with a more accurate sense of the park's majesty than black-and-white photographs could provide. The painting was included in a packet of materials presented to Congress, which was taken with Moran's image and designated Yellowstone the first national park.

Thomas Jefferson dismissed the Erie Canal as 'little short of madness'

When first proposed, President Jefferson scoffed at the idea of carving a 363-mile waterway through wilderness and rock. With no precedent in American engineering, the canal seemed impossible.

An adultery and poisoning case examined whether federal treaty power supersedes state law

This Radiolab podcast unpacks Bond v. United States, where a local love-triangle assault became a federal case under an international treaty—forcing the Supreme Court to confront a founding question: How far can federal power reach into crimes traditionally handled by the states?

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.