The Latest History Videos
On May 24, 1941, HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales intercepted the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. HMS Hood was struck by a shell from Bismarck that caused an explosion tearing the ship in half. In the three minutes it took for the ship to sink, only three of the 1,418 crew members were able to escape the wreckage: Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn, and Bill Dundas....
Since the Supreme Court ruled against "separate but equal" school facilities for blacks, the court decision has become iconic. Led by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP, the plaintiffs argued that separate education facilities contradicted the Fourteenth...
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, icons of the ideas Mao opposed were destroyed en masse. Confucian, Buddhist, and Christian icons were smashed and idols were sometimes replaced with images of Mao. Not content with just destroying objects, people were targeted...
On May 11, 1996, a commuter jet leaving Miami crashed in the Everglades shortly after takeoff, killing all 105 passengers and five crew members. The fire was caused by loosely packed out-of-date oxygen generators placed in the plane's cargo hold,...
Starting with a secret order signed by FDR allowing the FBI to spy on subversives, J. Edgar Hoover greatly expanded the powers of the Bureau to root out alleged spies and communists in the United States, reaching a peak in...
A local news report details the aftermath of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge disaster on May 9, 1980 in Tampa Bay. 35 people were killed when a 600-foot freighter collided with a bridge support column at 7:30 a.m., causing 1,200 feet of bridge...
Radio announcer Herbert Morrison describes the scene as the Hindenburg catches fire during a docking attempt on May 6, 1937. The Hindenburg was the world's largest airship by volume and filled with highly combustible hydrogen gas. Once the fire ignited,...
Seen here in HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon," American astronaut Alan Shepard pilots the Freedom 7 spacecraft to an altitude of 116.5 miles on May 5, 1961. Shepard was the second person, and first American, to fly into...
