Roger Williams founded the first American colony without an established church

The words 'separation of church and state' are not found in the Constitution

Responding to Connecticut Baptists concerned about religious liberty, Jefferson described the First Amendment as building "a wall of separation between church and state." The Supreme Court later cited the letter as an authoritative guide to the Establishment Clause.

Many early colonists came to America to escape religious persecution in Europe

Fleeing state-sponsored religious oppression in England and Europe, many early colonists sought freedom of conscience in the New World. Many—especially in New England—established their own religiously exclusive communities: They persecuted dissenters, expelled nonconformists, and enforced orthodoxy.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786, which directly influenced the US Constitution

Drafted by Jefferson, the statute guaranteed freedom of worship to people of all faiths. Jefferson considered it one of his greatest achievements, and it served as the direct model for the First Amendment's religion clauses.

The earliest colonial schools were often religious

The earliest American schools were far from our notions of “public” or “private”—they were neighborhood institutions, often founded by religious groups, that sought to educate children academically and spiritually.

Rhode Island skipped the Constitutional Convention

Delegates from 12 of the original 13 states attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Rhode Island initially refused to participate, fearing centralized power. The state eventually joined the new republic after its ratification.

In a letter, George Washington assured a Jewish congregation that the new government gives 'to bigotry no sanction'

In 1790, President Washington visited Newport's Touro Synagogue and received a welcoming letter from its warden. Washington's reply—considered his clearest statement on religious tolerance—assured the congregation that under the new government, religious freedom would be protected as a fundamental right.

Many of the founding fathers were deists—believers in a God of reason

A uniquely American iteration of the Enlightenment movement thrived during the Revolution. This selection from a longer write-up on the American Enlightenment highlights six core ideas: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration, and scientific progress.

Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794 after he was pulled from his knees during prayer

Born into slavery, Richard Allen left St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church when he and other Black congregants faced segregation and discrimination. He then established Bethel AME Church, which became the first congregation of one of the oldest and largest Black denominations in the world.

An estimated 40,000 Wampanoag populated 67 villages in the 1600s

For more than 10,000 years, native Wampanoag people have lived in and around Rhode Island and Massachusetts, especially in the islands known today as Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Roughly 5,000 dwell in the area today, after their numbers declined amid European migration.

Benjamin Franklin founded America's first lending library in 1731

Franklin convinced members of his intellectual club to pool resources and purchase books none could afford individually. The Library Company of Philadelphia was founded with 50 shareholders, each contributing 40 shillings, and served as the unofficial, de facto Library of Congress from the Revolutionary War until 1800.

The oldest restaurants in the US

This list features several establishments that have been around since before the Declaration of Independence, including the White Horse Tavern, in Newport, Rhode Island, and New York's Fraunces Tavern, where George Washington dismissed his troops at the end of the Revolutionary War.

New England towns have practiced direct democracy since the 1700s

Town meetings in New England let residents vote directly on local budgets, laws, and policies. One of the oldest surviving forms of participatory democracy in the United States, the tradition dates back nearly 250 years.

In 1639, Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned toasting

Like the Anglo-Saxons and the ancient Greeks before them, the American colonists tended to party when they got to toasting. That led to a 1639 law banning the practice, which they viewed as excessive and superstitious. Alcohol remained legal, but the hope was that banning toasting might reduce excessive drinking.

The Wrights descended from English-born migrants to Boston in the 1630s

Samuel Wright was a Puritan who arrived in Massachusetts just two decades after the Pilgrims. His great-great-grandson Daniel Wright, born in Connecticut in 1757, fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, seeing action at the Battle of Saratoga.

Read the only surviving eyewitness account of the first Thanksgiving

Edward Winslow’s short 1621 letter offers the only firsthand account of the first Thanksgiving, describing celebratory gunfire that drew Wampanoag leader Massasoit and 90 men—initially fearing conflict—before the gathering turned into shared feasting.

Washington condemned the Boston Tea Party

While he sympathized with the grievances behind it, he placed great importance on private property rights. He viewed the action as vandalism and believed those responsible should compensate the British East India Company.

The Eye of Providence on $1 bills is a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists

The symbol is associated with the Freemasons, one of the world’s oldest secret societies. It also appears on churches, Masonic buildings, and the great seal of the United States.

William James laid the foundation for psychology as a scientific discipline in the US

Though initially trained in painting, James would help establish Harvard's psychology department as a distinct science rather than an extension of philosophy. He taught one of the first psychology courses in America and is credited as one of the founders of American Pragmatism.

Trace how the Bill of Rights, inspired by centuries of political theory, took shape between 1774 and 1789.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Unitarian Frank Lloyd Wright made Unity Temple to honor his own faith

In 1905, a Unitarian church in Frank Lloyd Wright's town was struck by lightning and destroyed. Wright, a Unitarian himself, was commissioned to build the replacement and constructed a simple yet radical concrete sanctuary known as Unity Temple.

Early American citizenship was defined inconsistently by individual states

The original US Constitution did not define national citizenship, leaving it to the states to apply their own rules. This led to inconsistent and often exclusionary standards across the country until after the Civil War.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

Whitman founded an antislavery newspaper in Brooklyn

In 1948, Whitman founded a “free soil” newspaper called the Brooklyn Freeman, which explicitly argued against slavery. That activism led to problems for the paper, including an attack on its headquarters after the release of its first issue.

The namesake of gerrymandering was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence

Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts statesman and vice president under James Madison, signed the Declaration of Independence. He is also the only signer buried in Washington, DC, interred at Congressional Cemetery.

Employment Division v. Smith (1990) reaffirmed the Reynolds decision that the law applies to everyone, regardless of faith

The Supreme Court ruled that the government does not have to grant religious exemptions from laws that apply to everyone. The case involved Native American church members fired for using peyote in a religious ceremony.

Why Thoreau considered himself spiritual but not religious

This interview with Richard Higgins, author of "Thoreau's God," unpacks the writer's deep spirituality, which underlies his exploration of "deliberate" living. Higgins notes that Thoreau was opposed to the dogma of organized religion but took his spirituality seriously, treating July 4, 1845, when he moved to Walden Pond, as his own "spiritual independence day."

The first American roller coaster was built at Coney Island

LaMarcus Thompson was an inventor and businessman who developed the first US amusement park ride in the 19th century and sparked a booming business. Customers spent a nickel to coast on wheeled benches over gentle hills, leaving Thompson with around $600 per day in profits.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

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

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

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

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

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

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

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

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

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.