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How the Soviet Union's Fall Pushed Putin to Try and Recapture Russia's Global Importance

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How the Soviet Union's Fall Pushed Putin to Try and Recapture Russia's Global Importance

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How the Soviet Union’s Fall Pushed Putin to Try and Recapture Russia’s Global Importance

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While serving in the KGB in East Berlin, Putin was shocked and humiliated to experience the collapse of Soviet power firsthand.

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When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance

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When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance

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The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 was the most deadly flu outbreak in history, killing up to 50 million people worldwide. In the United States, where it ultimately killed around 675,000 people, local governments rolled out initiatives to try to stop its spread. These varied by region, and included closing schools and places of public amusement, enforcing "no-spitting" ordinances, encouraging people to use handkerchiefs or disposable tissues and requiring people to wear masks in public.

Mask-wearing ordinances mainly popped up in the western states, and it appears most people complied with them. The nation was still fighting in World War I, and officials framed anti-flu measures as a way to protect the troops from the deadly outbreak.
WATCH: The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier Than WWI
The first recorded infection was in a U.S. Army private stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas on March 4, 1918. Although the United States and the other nations at war initially suppressed news of the flu (neutral Spain freely reported it, hence the misnomer "Spanish flu"), there was a sense that following these new health precautions was patriotic.

As one Red Cross PSA put it, "the man or woman or child who will not wear a mask now is a dangerous slacker." This sense of wartime duty-and the fear of being seen as a "slacker"-may have motivated those who complied with mask orders in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and Phoenix.

Yet even though compliance was high, some complained that the masks were uncomfortable, ineffective or bad for business. Officials were caught in public without masks. And after the war ended, and there was no longer a sense that people should wear masks to keep the troops safe, some dissenters even formed an "Anti-Mask League" in San Francisco.
WATCH: World War I Documentaries on HISTORY Vault
Masks Were Made of Gauze or Even More Porous Material

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

In 1918, advanced masks like the N95s that healthcare workers use today were a long way off. Surgical masks were made of gauze, and many people's flu masks were made of gauze too. Red Cross volunteers made and distributed many of these, and newspapers carried instructions for those who may want to make a mask for themselves or donate some to the troops. Still, not everyone used the standard surgical design or material.

"To entice people to get them to wear them, [cities] were pretty lax in terms of what people could wear," says J. Alex Navarro, assistant director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and one of the editors-in-chief of The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia.

In October 1918, the Seattle Daily Times carried the headline "Influenza Veils Set New Fashion: Seattle Women Wearing Fine Mesh With Chiffon Border to Ward Off Malady." These "fashionable" masks and others made from dubious material probably weren't helping much. Yet there was also debate within the medical and scientific community about whether multiple-ply gauze masks were effective either.

For instance, Detroit health commissioner J.W. Inches said gauze masks were too porous to prevent the spread of the flu among the public. Also, masks are most effective when worn properly, which wasn't always what happened. In Phoenix, where most people apparently complied with the city's mask order, some nonetheless poked holes in their masks to smoke-which greatly reduced their effectiveness.
SEE PHOTOS: The 1918 Flu Campaigns to Shame People Into Following New Rules
'Mask Slackers' Faced Enforcement, Punishment

Still, for the small percentage of people who went without a mask entirely, reports suggest their issue had less to do with the science behind them, and more to do with personal comfort.

"You read routinely about people not wanting to wear them because they're hot and stuffy," says Nancy Bristow, chair of the history department at the University of Puget Sound and author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. "Some people argue against them because they say that they create fear in the public, and that we want to keep people calm; which I think is really an excuse to critique them because someone doesn't want to wear them."

PHOTOS: Innovative Ways People Tried to Protect Themselves From the Flu
Some businesses worried customers would shop less if they had to wear a mask when they went outside, and some people claimed mask ordinances were an infringement upon civil liberties. Yet "more important in terms of critiques," Bristow says, "is this idea that we've heard today as well that they give people a false sense of security." As she points out, wearing a mask is less effective when people don't follow other health guidelines too (and especially if some are poking holes in their masks to smoke).

Cities that passed masking ordinances in the fall of 1918 struggled to enforce them among the small portion of people who rebelled. Common punishments were fines, prison sentences and having your name printed in the paper. In one horrific incident in San Francisco, a special officer for the board of health shot a man who refused to wear a mask as well as two bystanders.

This was far different from the treatment San Francisco's leaders received when they didn't comply. At a boxing match, a police photographer captured images of several supervisors, a congressman, a justice, a Navy rear-admiral, the city's health officer and even the mayor, all without masks. The health officer paid a $5 fine and the mayor later paid a $50 fine, but unlike other "mask slackers," they received no prison time (not to mention no one shot at them).

Mask-Wearing Declines After the War

Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News Collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

San Francisco's first masking order began in October and ended in November after the World War I armistice. In January, when flu cases began to surge again in San Francisco, the city implemented a second mask order. This time, the resistance was much more intense. A group of dissenters that included a few physicians and one member of the Board of Supervisors formed the "Anti-Mask League," which held a public meeting with over 2,000 attendees.

Navarro speculates the resistance to San Francisco's second mask order may have been more intense because the country was no longer at war, and some residents didn't feel the same sense of patriotic duty they had before. In any case, the city was an outlier. It doesn't appear that there were similar leagues or protests in other cities.

Nancy Tomes, a distinguished professor of history at Stony Brook University who has written about public health measures during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic says while there were pockets of resistance to mask-wearing in 1918 and 1919, it was not widespread.

And, unlike handkerchiefs and paper tissues, which Tomes says people began to use more regularly because of the pandemic, mask-wearing did not catch on in the United States after the ordinances ended. It's still difficult to say how effective mask-wearing on its own was in 1918 and 1919. What is clear is that communities that implemented stronger health measures overall fared better than those that didn't.

"Today we can look back and see that they flattened the curve and the communities that did enforce much stricter regulations and for a longer period of time and began earlier had lower death rates," Bristow says. "But they didn't have that data tabulated yet, so I think in the aftermath it wasn't as clear that what they had done had been effective."
Read more: Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly Spanish Flu - Symptoms, How It Began & Ended Amid 1918 Flu Pandemic, America Struggled to Bury the Dead Why October 1918 Was America's Deadliest Month Ever Pandemics That Changed History: Timeline

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When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance

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The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 was the most deadly flu outbreak in history, killing up to 50 million people worldwide. In the United States, where it ultimately killed around 675,000 people, local governments rolled out initiatives to try to stop its spread.

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It Took Surprisingly Long for Doctors to Figure Out the Benefits of Hand Washing

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It Took Surprisingly Long for Doctors to Figure Out the Benefits of Hand Washing

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One of the best ways to prevent the spread of the flu and other viruses is to wash your hands. Today, this may seem like common sense to many people (even if they don't all do it properly). Yet it wasn't until the mid-19th century that some doctors in the United States and Europe began to wash their hands before examining patients-and even then, only in certain cases.

An early proponent of hand washing was Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who worked at the Vienna General Hospital between 1844 and 1848. The hospital was one of the largest in the world for teaching, and its maternity wing was so big that it was divided into two wards: one for doctors and their students and one for midwives and their students.

Yet there was a stark disparity between these wards.

Between 1840 and 1846, the maternal mortality rate for the midwives' ward was 36.2 per 1000 births, while the mortality rate for the doctors' ward was 98.4 per 1000 births, according to a 2013 article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Specifically, the doctors' ward had a higher rate of "childbed fever," now known as streptococcal infection. Semmelweis started to look for any differences between the wards.
READ MORE: Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly
One difference was that in the doctors' division, a priest regularly passed through and rang a bell as a last sacrament to the dying women, explains Dana Tulodziecki, a philosophy professor at Purdue University who has written about Semmelweis in the journal Philosophy of Science. Semmelweis wondered if women were dying because of "the psychological terror of hearing the bell-so even if you're not actually dying, you just hear the bell, you know it could be your time." Semmelweis rerouted the priest, but it made no difference.

Then in 1847, the death of Semmelweis' colleague Jakob Kolletschka led him to a breakthrough. Kolletschka had cut his finger on a scalpel during an autopsy, and developed an infection that killed him. Semmelweis wondered whether a similar type of infection could be happening in the doctors' maternity ward.

ullstein bild/Getty Images

Semmelweis realized that, unlike the hospital's midwives, doctors sometimes examined women in the maternity ward after performing autopsies. In the absence of germ theory, Semmelweis theorized Kolletschka had died because "cadaveric matter" entered his body through his wound, and that women in the doctors' ward might also be dying because cadaveric matter from doctors' hands was entering their body through their genitalia.

Although this was incorrect, Semmelweis' response to his theory was pretty good. He started mandating that doctors wash their hands with chlorinated lime after autopsies. And it was a big improvement-between 1848 and 1859, the maternal mortality rate in the doctors' ward dropped to around the same level as the midwives' ward.

After this, the story becomes a little controversial. Previous scholars have argued Semmelweis tried to convince other hospitals to adopt his policies, and that they refused. Tulodziecki says the real story is more complicated. Yes, "doctors weren't pleased that Semmelweis essentially implied that they were responsible for killing all these women," she says. Yet "it's also true that when he finally did publish the etiology of childbed fever, it wasn't very well-written; it's kind of rambling in parts. He was also a really stubborn person, very dogmatic." As she says, "Overall, he could have made his arguments better."
READ MORE: Spanish Flu - Symptoms, How It Began & Ended
Semmelweis insisted all childbed fever was caused by cadaveric matter or decomposing animal matter, which didn't make any sense. Childbed fever was a very old infection that appeared in home births as well as the midwives' ward at Vienna General Hospital, where cadaveric or decomposing animal matter wasn't a factor. Making sure doctors washed their hands after autopsies was one way to reduce childbed fever, but Semmelweis alienated his colleagues by insisting it was the only way-which didn't seem likely to them.

In any case, Semmelweis wasn't the only doctor in the mid-19th century to realize medical professionals' own hygiene might have some effect on their patients. In 1843, the American doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes published a paper arguing doctors with dirty hands could cause childbed fever in their patients. The British nurse Florence Nightingale, considered the founder of modern nursing, wrote in her 1860 publication Notes on Nursing that "Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day."

Still, the importance of hand washing for medical professionals didn't really become understood until scientists hit upon germ theory-the idea that certain diseases and infections are caused by microorganisms we can't even see. In particular, the British surgeon Joseph Lister drastically improved patient mortality by advocating that surgeons wash their hands and sterilize their instruments in between patients.

Today, medical and health professionals consider hand washing a critical hygienic practice, both for themselves and their patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, even provides guidelines for how to properly wash your hands. To properly kill germs, the CDC advocates scrubbing them with soap for at least 20 seconds before rinsing the soap off with water. Drying them completely is also important, since wet hands spread germs more easily.
WATCH Flashback: Soapy the Germ Fighter In the 1950s, cleanliness was king. In this Flashback, learn proper hygiene techniques from Soapy, a talking bar of soap.

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It Took Surprisingly Long for Doctors to Figure Out the Benefits of Hand Washing

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One of the best ways to prevent the spread of the flu and other viruses is to wash your hands. Today, this may seem like common sense to many people (even if they don't all do it properly).

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Fukushima Timeline: How an Earthquake Triggered Japan’s 2011 Nuclear Disaster

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Fukushima Timeline: How an Earthquake Triggered Japan’s 2011 Nuclear Disaster

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The 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was the worst nuclear event since the meltdown at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union 25 years prior.

It started with an earthquake. It resulted in 465,000 evacuations, $360 billion in economic losses and increased radiation levels in Tokyo, 140 miles away.

As with most disasters, several things had to go wrong to produce such a catastrophic outcome. Below is a detailed account of how the devastation unfolded.

March 11, 2011: An Earthquake Precipitates Crisis

2:46 pm: The westward moving Pacific Plate, an oceanic tectonic plate, lurches downwards beneath the North American plate, causing an earthquake 43 miles off the northeastern coast of Honshu, Japan's most populous island. The earthquake has a magnitude of 9.1, making it the largest earthquake in Japan's history-and one of the five most powerful earthquakes globally recorded since modern record-keeping began.

3:27 p.m.: The earthquake sets off a tsunami. The first wave arrives at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the form of a 13-foot-high wave, which is deflected by a sea wall built to withstand waves up to 33 feet high.

3:35 p.m.: A second wave, this one over 50 feet high, breaches the wall. It destroys seawater pumps, drowns power panels that distribute energy to water pumps, and surges into basements where backup generators are housed. In five of the six reactors, AC power is lost; without the power, water pumps can't provide the steady flow of cool water to the reactors' intensely hot cores. Without the regular flow of cooling water, a meltdown will inevitably follow.
READ MORE: Chernobyl Timeline: How a Nuclear Accident Escalated to a Historic Disaster
3:37 p.m.: With flooding having destroyed the generator's backup batteries, Unit 1 loses DC power as well. The control room for Units 1 and 2 goes dark, depriving power plant operators any capacity for monitoring the two reactors.

Just before 6 p.m.: A work crew goes to the 4th floor of the Unit 1 reactor building without protective clothing. Their dosimeters read off-the-scale levels of radiation, indicating that the core of Unit 1 is exposed and its fuel rods ruptured.

7:03 p.m.: Prime Minister Naoto Kan declares a nuclear emergency.

9:00 p.m.: The Japanese government issues evacuation orders for the several thousand residents living within a 1.9-mile (3 kilometer) radius of the power plant.

March 12: Evacuation Area Expands, the Roof Blows

Shortly before 6 a.m.: Prime Minister Kan decides to go to Fukushima. He orders authorities to widen the evacuation zone to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers). With the loss of coolant, temperature and pressure builds inside the reactors.

10:09 a.m.: The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announces they have vented some steam from Unit 1 in an attempt to lower the temperature and pressure. The venting means that some radioactive material has been released into the air.

10:58 a.m.: Unit 2, it is announced, has likewise been vented.

3:36 p.m.: A hydrogen explosion blows the roof off Unit 1, collapsing concrete walls and leaving behind only the steel framework. Four workers are injured in the explosion. In addition to the harm to the workers, the explosion damages electric cable that workers had been laying for the purposes of restoring power to Units 1 and 2. The explosion also damages fire hoses that workers had arranged, hampering the plant's ability to deliver coolant to the reactor core.

Just before 6:30 p.m.: The evacuation area is expanded to a 12.4- mile (20 kilometer) radius.

8:20 p.m.: TEPCO begins injecting seawater into Unit 1, as a substitute coolant. The decision to use seawater is the death knell to Reactor 1: Unlike fresh water, it irreparably corrodes pumps and pipelines. Around the same time, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) detects harmful radiation levels of cesium 137 and iodine 131 near the plant.
READ MORE: The Chernobyl Coverup: How Officials Botched Evacuating an Irradiated City
March 13

6:23 a.m.: A NISA official announces that the emergency cooling system in the Unit 3 reactor has failed.

10:05 p.m.: TEPCO begins injecting seawater into Unit 3.

10:09 p.m.: TEPCO announces a plan to inject seawater into Unit 2, the first acknowledgement of emergency at that reactor.

March 14: Explosions Continue

11:01 a.m.: There's a hydrogen explosion at the Unit 3 reactor. 11 workers are injured, and the building's structure is severely damaged.

March 15

6:14 a.m.: A hydrogen explosion occurs at the Unit 2 reactor.

Throughout the day: Seawater pumping continues at Units 1, 2 and 3. Near the plant, radiation levels are measured at 400 millisieverts per hour. By comparison, the average person is exposed to about 2.4 millisieverts of radiation per year, meaning that radiation at Fukushima is 1.46 million times stronger than it would be in an average environment.

March 17

The military begins using helicopters to dump seawater onto Unit 3, where radiation levels are at 17 millisieverts per hour.

March 19

Replacement diesel generators are successfully implemented at Units 5 and 6, pumping water back into those reactor cores. Elsewhere, the extent of damage becomes clearer: Milk and water in the greater Fukushima Prefecture show excessively high levels of radioactive iodine.
READ MORE: Chernobyl: 7 People Who Played a Crucial Role in the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster
March 20: Things Start to Stabilize

Temperatures stabilize at Units 5 and 6, bringing about the safe harbor of "cold shutdown" conditions. Electrical power is restored to Unit 2.

March 22

Eleven days after the initial disaster, electrical power is restored to the control rooms of Units 1 and 2. In the wastewater just south of the plant, radioactive iodine is measured at 126.7 times higher than the legal limit.

March 25

The Unit 1 Reactor temperature is brought down to 204.5 degrees Celsius, safely inside its design limits. The Japanese government advises those residents who are between 20 and 30 kilometers away from the the plant to voluntarily evacuate the area.
READ MORE: How the Three Mile Island Accident Was Made Even Worse by a Chaotic Response
March 26

Seawater that's tested near the plant has 1,250 times the legal limit of iodine 131.

April 11

A new earthquake, of magnitude 7.0, rocks eastern Japan. For 50 minutes, Fukushima loses power, preventing cooling water from reaching Units 1, 2, and 3.

April 12: Atomic Disaster Declaration

The International Atomic Energy Agency rates the Fukushima Crisis a disaster magnitude of 7, the highest of their scale.

May 11

Evacuees who have abandoned homes within 20 kilometers of Fukushima are given two hours to return for important documents or belongings left behind in the initial haste of their evacuation.

February 2, 2012

Nearly a year after the disaster, the village of Kawauchi-one of nine evacuated municipalities less than 20 kilometers from the plant-announces plans to reopen in the spring.

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Fukushima Timeline: How an Earthquake Triggered Japan's 2011 Nuclear Disaster

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The 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was the worst nuclear event since the meltdown at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union 25 years prior. It started with an earthquake. It resulted in 465,000 evacuations, $360 billion in economic losses and increased radiation levels in Tokyo, 140 miles away.

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1. The Printing Press

Prior to the rise of the Internet, no innovation did more for the spread and democratization of knowledge than Johannes Gutenberg's printing press. Developed around 1440 in Mainz, Germany, Gutenberg's machine improved on already existing presses through the use of a mould that allowed for the rapid production of lead alloy type pieces. This assembly line method of copying books enabled a single printing press to create as many as 3,600 pages per day. By 1500 over 1,000 Gutenberg presses were operating in Europe, and by 1600 they had created over 200 million new books. The printing press not only made books affordable for the lower classes, but it helped spark the Age of Enlightenment and facilitated the spread of new and often controversial ideas. In 1518 followers of the German monk Martin Luther used the printing press to copy and disseminate his seminal work " The Ninety-Five Theses," which jumpstarted the Protestant Reformation and spurred conflicts like the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). The printing press proved so influential in prompting revolutions, religious upheaval and scientific thought that Mark Twain would later write, "What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg."
READ MORE: 7 Ways the Printing Press Changed the World
2. The Compass

Magnetic compasses may have been made somewhat obsolete by satellites and global positioning systems, but their impact on early navigation and exploration was inestimable. Originally invented in China, by the 14th century compasses had widely replaced astronomical means as the primary navigational instrument for mariners. The compass provided explorers with a reliable method for traversing the world's oceans, a breakthrough that ignited the Age of Discovery and won Europe the wealth and power that later fueled the Industrial Revolution. Most importantly, the compass allowed for interaction-both peaceful and otherwise-between previously isolated world cultures.

3. Paper Currency

Throughout much of human history, money took the form of precious metals, coins and even raw materials like livestock or vegetables. The inception of paper money ushered in a bold new era-a world in which currency could purchase goods and services despite having no intrinsic value. Paper currency was widely used in China in the ninth century, but did not appear in Europe until the late 1600s. Spurred on by frequent shortages of coins, banks issued paper notes as a promise against future payments of precious metals. By the late 19th century many nations had begun issuing government-backed legal tender that could no longer be converted into gold or silver. The switch to paper money not only bailed out struggling governments during times of crisis-as it did for the United States during the Civil War -but it also ushered in a new era of international monetary regulation that changed the face of global economics. Perhaps even more importantly, paper currency was the vital first step in a new monetary system that led to the birth of credit cards and electronic banking.
READ MORE: First Paper Currency Is Issued In the 13 Colonies
4. Steel

While early human societies made extensive use of stone, bronze and iron, it was steel that fueled the Industrial Revolution and built modern cities. Evidence of steel tools dates back 4,000 years, but the alloy was not mass-produced until the invention of the Bessemer Process, a technique for creating steel using molten pig iron, in the 1850s. Steel then exploded into one of the biggest industries on the planet and was used in the creation of everything from bridges and railroads to skyscrapers and engines. It proved particularly influential in North America, where massive iron ore deposits helped the United States become one of the world's biggest economies.
READ MORE: The Spies Who Launched America's Industrial Revolution
5. The Electric Light

While they are easy to take for granted, all it takes is a short power outage to remind us of the importance of artificial lights. Pioneered in the early 19th century by Humphry Davy and his carbon arc lamp, electric lights developed throughout the 1800s thanks to the efforts of inventors like Warren de la Rue, Joseph Wilson Swan and Thomas Alva Edison. It was Edison and Swan who patented the first long-lasting light bulbs in 1879 and 1880, liberating society from a near-total reliance on daylight. Electric lights went on to be used in everything from home lighting and street lamps to flashlights and car headlights. The complex networks of wires erected to power early light bulbs also helped lead to the first domestic electrical wiring, paving the way for countless other in-home appliances.
READ MORE: The Race to Electrify America
6. Domestication of the Horse

Since their domestication some 5,500 years ago, horses have been inextricably tied to human development. They enabled people to travel great distances and gave different cultures the chance to trade and exchange ideas and technology. Equine strength and agility meant that horses could also carry cargo, plow farmland and even clear forests. Perhaps most influential of all, horses changed the nature of war. Nothing was more feared than a horse-drawn chariot or a mounted warrior, and societies that mastered the use of cavalry typically prevailed in battle.
READ MORE: How Horses Transformed Life for Plains Indians
7. Transistors

A criminally under-appreciated innovation, the transistor is an essential component in nearly every modern electronic gadget. First developed in late 1947 by Bell Laboratories, these tiny semiconductor devices allow for precise control of the amount and flow of current through circuit boards. Originally used in radios, transistors have since become an elemental piece of the circuitry in countless electronic devices including televisions, cell phones and computers. The amount of transistors in integrated circuits doubles nearly every two years-a phenomenon known as Moore's Law-so their remarkable impact on technology will only continue to grow.

8. Magnifying Lenses

Magnifying lenses might seem like an unremarkable invention, but their use has offered mankind a glimpse of everything from distant stars and galaxies to the minute workings of living cells. Lenses first came into use in the 13th century as an aid for the weak-sighted, and the first microscopes and telescopes followed in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Figures like Robert Hook and Anton van Leeuwenhoek would go on to use microscopes in the early observance of cells and other particles, while Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler employed the telescope to chart Earth's place in the cosmos. These early uses were the first steps in the development of astonishing devices like the electron microscope and the Hubble Space Telescope. Magnifying lenses have since led to new breakthroughs in an abundance of fields including astronomy, biology, archeology, optometry and surgery.
READ MORE: 10 Fascinating Facts About the Hubble Space Telescope
9. The Telegraph

The telegraph was the first in a long line of communications breakthroughs that later included radio, telephones and email. Pioneered by a variety of inventors in the 18th and 19th centuries, the telegraph used Samuel Morse's famous Morse code to convey messages by intermittently stopping the flow of electricity along communications wires. Telegraph lines multiplied throughout the 1850s, and by 1902 transoceanic cables encircled the globe. The original telegraph and its wireless successors went on to be the first major advancements in worldwide communication. The ability to send messages rapidly across great distances made an indelible impact on government, trade, banking, industry, warfare and news media, and formed the bedrock of the information age.
READ MORE: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Help Win the Civil War
10. Antibiotics

A giant step forward in the field of medicine, antibiotics saved millions of lives by killing and preventing the growth of harmful bacteria. Scientists like Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister were the first to recognize and attempt to combat bacteria, but it was Alexander Fleming who made the first leap in antibiotics when he accidentally discovered the bacteria-inhibiting mold known as penicillin in 1928. Antibiotics proved to be a major improvement on antiseptics-which killed human cells along with bacteria-and their use spread rapidly throughout the 20th century. Nowhere was their effect more apparent than on the battlefield: While nearly 20 percent of soldiers who contracted bacterial pneumonia died in World War I, with antibiotics-namely Penicillin-that number dropped to only 1 percent during World War II. Antibiotics including penicillin, vancomycin, cephalosporin and streptomycin have gone on to fight nearly every known form of infection, including influenza, malaria, meningitis, tuberculosis and most sexually transmitted diseases.
READ MORE: It Took Surprisingly Long for Doctors to Figure Out the Benefits of Hand Washing
11. The Steam Engine

Cars, airplanes, factories, trains, spacecraft-none of these transportation methods would have been possible if not for the early breakthrough of the steam engine. The first practical use of external combustion dates back to 1698, when Thomas Savery developed a steam-powered water pump. Steam engines were then perfected in the late 1700s by James Watt, and went on to fuel one of the most momentous technological leaps in human history during the Industrial Revolution. Throughout the 1800s external combustion allowed for exponential improvement in transportation, agriculture and manufacturing, and also powered the rise of world superpowers like Great Britain and the United States. Most important of all, the steam engine's basic principle of energy-into-motion set the stage for later innovations like internal combustion engines and jet turbines, which prompted the rise of cars and aircraft during the 20th century.
WATCH: Assembly Required with Tim Allen and Richard Karn premieres Tuesday, February 23 at 10/9c on HISTORY. Watch a preview now.

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Prior to the rise of the Internet, no innovation did more for the spread and democratization of knowledge than Johannes Gutenberg's printing press. Developed around 1440 in Mainz, Germany, Gutenberg's machine improved on already existing presses through the use of a mould that allowed for the rapid production of lead alloy type pieces.

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8 Groundbreaking Inventions from the Second Industrial Revolution

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8 Groundbreaking Inventions from the Second Industrial Revolution

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8 Groundbreaking Inventions from the Second Industrial Revolution

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The period between the late 1800s and the early 1900s saw a boom in innovations that would take the world by storm.

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The New Deal was one of President Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Great Depression. Art projects were a major part of this series of federal relief programs,

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When World War I and Pandemic Influenced the 1920 Presidential Election

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When World War I and Pandemic Influenced the 1920 Presidential Election

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Lashed by a squall of historical events over four harrowing years, exhausted Americans longed to catch their collective breath as Election Day approached.

The four years leading up to the presidential election of 1920 had delivered a ghastly confluence of war, pestilence, terrorism and unemployment. As soon as World War I finished taking the lives of 100,000 Americans, a global influenza pandemic stole another 650,000 more. Race riots, labor strikes and a string of anarchist bombings-including one that slaughtered 38 people on Wall Street-rocked American cities following the war. The American economy was far from roaring in 1920 as unemployment soared and stock prices plummeted. Americans bitterly divided over whether to join the League of Nations, and fears of the spread of communism after the Russian Revolution sparked the Red Scare and Palmer Raids. A cheating scandal had tainted the national pastime with accusations that the " Black Sox " had conspired with gamblers to fix the 1919 World Series. Even the heavens appeared to offer little salvation as a cluster of nearly 40 tornadoes struck from Georgia to Wisconsin on Palm Sunday in 1920, leaving more than 380 dead.
READ MORE: Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly
The 'best of the second-raters'

Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Against this turbulent backdrop, the Republican Party gathered in Chicago in June 1920 to select its nominee to succeed President Woodrow Wilson, who had suffered a debilitating stroke months earlier. Seeking to regain the White House, Republicans settled on a dark-horse candidate, Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, on the tenth ballot. "There ain't any first-raters this year," declared Connecticut Senator Frank Brandegee. "We got a lot of second-raters, and Warren Harding is the best of the second-raters." A small-town newspaper publisher from a swing state in the American heartland who bridged the party's progressive and conservative wings, Harding was a safe choice who could deliver just the sort of political comfort Americans craved.

Harding promised nerve-wracked voters anything but radical change. In a May 1920 speech in Boston, he declared, "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality."
READ MORE: The Race to Pass Suffrage Before the 1920 Election
Back to 'normalcy'

Newberry Library

When he returned from the Senate to his home town of Marion, Ohio, in July, Harding proclaimed to his neighbors, "Normal men and back to normalcy will steady a civilization which has been fevered by the supreme upheaval of all the world." "Back to normalcy" and "return to normalcy" were quickly adopted as Harding campaign slogans (along with another one, "America First.")

Harding's mention of "normalcy" sparked not just a political debate, but a grammatical one as well. Critics of the Republican nominee claimed the word was a malaprop uttered by Harding when he actually meant to say "normality." The candidate pressed back. "I have noticed that word caused considerable newspaper editors to change it to 'normality,'" Harding told the press. "I have looked for 'normality' in my dictionary, and I do not find it there. 'Normalcy,' however, I find, and it is a good word." Indeed, the term appeared in newspapers of the day, and Merriam-Webster traces its origins back to at least 1855.

Harding insisted his desire for "normalcy" was not a longing to turn back the clock. "By 'normalcy' I do not mean the old order, but a regular, steady order of things," he said. "I mean normal procedure, the natural way, without excess. I don't believe the old order can or should come back, but we must have normal order, or, as I have said, 'normalcy.'"

The 'front porch campaign'

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Echoing his promise of a return to simpler, less chaotic times, Harding ran a campaign straight out of the 1890s, a time before the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt, the idealism of Wilson and the turmoil of populism. While his Democratic opponent, Ohio Governor James M. Cox, travelled 22,000 miles around the country to hold campaign rallies, Harding rarely ventured further than his doorstep and emulated William McKinley's path to the White House with a "Front Porch Campaign." Pilgrims came by the thousands to Harding's house just off Main Street in Marion and gathered on the front lawn around the verandah to hear the candidate orate from the top step. Foreshadowing selfie lines a century later, voters waited their turns to have photographs taken with Harding and his wife, Florence, that were sent to their hometown newspapers.

Harding's milquetoast personality and small-town appeal spoke to the times: He won by a landslide in both the Electoral College and the popular vote to become the 29th president of the United States. He carried 37 of 48 states, including every state outside the South. The Republican ticket captured more than 16 million votes, nearly double those tallied by Cox and his vice-presidential running mate, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican Party also won sizable majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

"Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way," Harding declared in his inaugural address.

But while America emerged from under the clouds of recession, pandemic and war in the ensuing years, the Harding presidency generated its own turbulence. Prohibition saw a rise in gang violence and organized crime. Harding's cabinet was plagued by corruption such as the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which oil men bribed Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall for drilling rights on federal land. Harding would not finish his four-year term. He died in 1923 at the age of 57 in a San Francisco hotel room while on a cross-country tour of the United States.

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When World War I and Pandemic Influenced the 1920 Presidential Election

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Lashed by a squall of historical events over four harrowing years, exhausted Americans longed to catch their collective breath as Election Day approached. The four years leading up to the presidential election of 1920 had delivered a ghastly confluence of war, pestilence, terrorism and unemployment.

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Why Congress Passed the Defense Production Act in 1950?

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Why Congress Passed the Defense Production Act in 1950?

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Why Congress Passed the Defense Production Act in 1950

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The Cold War-era law went into effect during a time when President Truman felt the nation was unprepared.

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What Was Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad?

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What Was Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad?

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Velvet cushions and gilt-framed mirrors. Feasts of antelope, trout, berries and Champagne. In 1869, a New York Times reporter experienced the ultimate in luxury-and he did so not in the parlor of a Gilded Age magnate, but on a train headed from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, California.

Just a few years before, the author would have had to rely on a bumpy stagecoach or a covered wagon to tackle a journey that took months. Now, he was gliding along the rails, passing by the varied scenery of the American West while dining, sleeping and relaxing.

The ride was "not only tolerable but comfortable, and not only comfortable but a perpetual delight," he wrote. "At the end of our journey [we] found ourselves not only wholly free from fatigue, but completely rehabilitated in body and spirits. Were we very far from wrong if we voted the Pacific Railroad a success?"

The author was just one of the thousands of people who flocked to the Transcontinental Railroad beginning in 1869. The railroad, which stretched nearly 2,000 miles between Iowa, Nebraska and California, reduced travel time across the West from about six months by wagon or 25 days by stagecoach to just four days. And for the travelers who tried out the new transportation route, the Transcontinental Railroad represented both the height of modern technology and the tempting possibility of unrestricted travel.

Railroads Passed Through 'Untouched' Indigenous Land

The first passenger train on the line took 102 hours to travel from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, and a first-class ticket cost $134.50-the equivalent of about $2,700 today. It traveled what was known as the Overland Route, threading its way through prairies, mountains and deserts that had been nearly impassable just years before.

Passengers were impressed by the landscape's beauty and seeming desolation. "For hundreds of miles we saw no other persons except now and then a station with a few hovels about it," wrote Celia Cooley Graves, a Massachusetts woman who took the Overland Route to San Francisco in 1875.

At the time, the areas through which the train had been built were not yet home to large numbers of white settlers. In fact, millions of acres of the land the new railroad traversed had belonged to Indigenous people-but the U.S. Congress had granted the land to railroad companies.

For many Native nations, the railroads represented an unwelcome intrusion as they soon introduced a wave of white settlement. The trains provided supplies for those relocating from the East and allowed people with means to use the railroad instead of covered wagons.
READ MORE: 10 Ways the Transcontinental Railroad Changed America
First-Class Passenger Cars Offered Luxury

The journey west on railroads wasn't only faster and easier than covered wagons, it could also be luxurious. First-class passengers reveled in what they saw as the comfort and modernity of the trains themselves. The train cars were "a constant delight," wrote Henry T. Williams in an 1876 guide to railroad travel in the West. "One lives at home in the Palace Car with as much true enjoyment as in the home drawing-room."

Williams was referring to Pullman palace cars, ornate train cars used for first-class passengers on the Union Pacific railroad. The cars, which included sleepers, dining cars and parlor cars, were lavishly decorated and full of sumptuous details like painstakingly carved wood and velvet hangings. Unlike the parlors of the Gilded Age's rich and famous, palace cars were open to anyone who could pay the fee.

According to historian Lucius Morris Beebe, this had a lasting effect on American culture. "Before [Pullman's] first palace cars few enough Americans had any least conception of what constituted true luxury," he wrote; "three decades of first-hand contact with the manifestations of opulence available aboard the cars created a universal demand for rich living which had a profound effect on the American economy and national way of life which has not yet disappeared."

The elaborate cars were especially influential for women travelers. At the time, traveling in public or doing so alone was considered highly unusual, and undesirable, for middle- and upper-class white women. But the Pullman cars helped calm the fears of those who did not like to see women stepping outside their "separate sphere" of home and family. According to historian Amy G. Richter, the train cars' home-like setting, and the presence of women in the living room-like cars, legitimized train travel for women and soothed those who feared that public life would endanger women and the moral order.

Second- And Third-Class Passengers Faced a Rougher Journey

But rich travelers were not the only people who rode the new trains. The railroad system borrowed from the ocean liners that were bringing unprecedented numbers of immigrants to United States shores and offered different fares for different classes of traveler. The poorest travelers could ride the rails for less money, but their accommodations were less glitzy than those of the richer passengers.

Second-class passengers had upholstered seats; third-class, or "emigrant" passengers, paid half of what the first-class passengers did but had to sit on benches instead of seats and bring their own food. "The overland journey is no fairy tale to those who read it from a way car!" wrote a journalist in 1878, noting crowded conditions and discomfort in the ordinary passenger cars.

Racism rode the rails, too. When British author Robert Lewis Stevenson rode the train in 1879, he noted that there was an entire car just for Chinese passengers. Though up to 20,000 Chinese immigrants had built the railroad, they were treated with contempt at the time, reflecting racist attitudes and socially sanctioned discrimination.
READ MORE: Building the Transcontinental RR: How Chinese Immigrants Made It Happen
Though Black people did ride as passengers, they were more often spotted working as laborers or porters. From the 1860s, all of the porters in Pullman cars were Black men. Though the job could be demeaning, and perpetuated stereotypes of black men as servile, anonymous workers at the beck and call of white passengers, it also helped build a middle class among black men.
READ MORE: The Pullman Porters
Dangers of the Journey on the Transcontinental Railroad

The trains shortened the journey across the country, but they weren't without risk. In 1872, for example, Walter Scott Fitz's journey toward San Francisco was literally derailed by a massive, weeks-long snowstorm. The men on the train, including passengers, had to dig it out of huge snow drifts in Wyoming. The passengers were so dismayed by the constant stops that they held what Fitz called an "indignation meeting" to express their outrage at the travel conditions. The hellish trip involved derailing, begging people who lived near their frequent stops to make the passengers food, and waiting days to move.

"There was, of course, much suffering amongst second class passengers, and others who could not afford to buy supplies & who were cooped up in ordinary cars," Fitz wrote. "How they managed to eat, live, & sleep with two people in each seat will always be a marvel to me....Such a mess of filth, foul air and dirty people I never want to see again. The railroad people were so lazy that they refused to clean the cars, and, on the few occasions of cleaning, the passengers did it themselves." The four-day trip ended up taking three weeks.

Eventually, the entire United States ended up being crisscrossed by train tracks that predated modern highways. The railroad changed life forever, enabling white settlement in areas of the West once considered desolate and forbidding and making it possible for people to strike out on the frontier without the dangers of months of travel in the open air.

And for those who made the once unthinkable trip, the Transcontinental Railroad inspired awe and wondered at the vastness and beauty of the American West. "We gazed long and enchanted on that scene of sublimity and beauty," wrote Thomas A. Weed of an 1871 view of the Sierra Nevada. "With what interest did we look out upon this land of the extreme west."

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What Was It Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad?

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Velvet cushions and gilt-framed mirrors. Feasts of antelope, trout, berries and Champagne. In 1869, a New York Times reporter experienced the ultimate in luxury-and he did so not in the parlor of a Gilded Age magnate, but on a train headed from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, California.

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9 New Deal Infrastructure Projects That Changed America

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9 New Deal Infrastructure Projects That Changed America

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9 New Deal Infrastructure Projects That Changed America

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The Hoover Dam, LaGuardia Airport and the Bay Bridge were all part of FDR’s New Deal investment.

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Stock Market Crash: 1929 & Black Tuesday | HISTORY

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The Stock Market Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression, as some 16 million shares were traded on Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, wiping out many investors.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Landmark Opinions on Women's Rights

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Landmark Opinions on Women's Rights

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From her lively questions to her scathing legal writing to her black velvet "dissent collar" she wore to indicate her disapproval of an opinion, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg built her career on the fight for women's rights.

Before her days as a judge, she acted as general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she argued over 300 gender discrimination cases-six before the Supreme Court-and cofounded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. As a civilian, Ginsburg earned a reputation as a dogged advocate for gender equality. As a judge, first during 13 years as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, then during 27 years as a Supreme Court Justice, she built upon that legacy.

Though she had a lifelong interest in gender equality, she was warned that to pursue a legal career that hinged on fighting discrimination against women was a nonstarter. "The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished," she told the New York Times ' Philip Galanes in 2015. "It was considered frivolous."

Nevertheless, after being appointed Associate Justice by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg authored some 200 opinions-and broke new ground for gender equality in the United States.

Here are some ways Ginsburg fought for gender equality:

"Equal Protection" for women and men means males cannot be preferred to females.

Ginsburg took advantage of prior civil rights rulings on race-and male plaintiffs-to help illustrate why the Supreme Court should end gender discrimination. Many of her cases hinged on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which provides that people shall be equally protected by U.S. laws. Through a barrage of smaller cases, she chipped away at discriminatory laws.

But it was Reed v. Reed, a 1971 case for which Ginsburg wrote the plaintiff's brief, that relied on the 14th Amendment. A minor, Richard Lynn Reed, known as "Skip," died and his mother wanted to be designated as administrator of his estate. Sally and her husband, Cecil Reed, had separated. Despite Sally filing a petition first, Cecil's application was automatically approved because of an Idaho statute that stated that "males must be preferred to females" when there was more than one qualified person available to administer someone's estate.

Ginsburg argued that this violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed and struck down the Idaho statute. It was the first time the Court had ever applied the Equal Protection Clause to a law that discriminated on the basis of gender.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Gender-based discrimination hurts men too-Ginsburg argues her first case before the Supreme Court.

Another case that hinged on gender discrimination and government benefits was Frontiero v. Richardson. The 1973 case was the first Ginsburg argued before the Supreme Court. When a woman in the U.S. Air Force applied for benefits for her dependent husband, she was told she'd have to prove he was a dependent, even though men in the Air Force didn't have to prove that their wives were dependent on them.

In an amicus brief, Ginsburg used the statute to argue that gender-based discrimination hurt men, too. "Why," she asked the Court during oral arguments, "did the framers of the 14th Amendment regard racial [discrimination] as odious? Because a person's skin color bears no necessary relationship to ability. Similarly...a person's sex bears no necessary relationship to ability."

A plurality of the Supreme Court found the benefit policy violated the Constitution and argued that, because of the United States' long history of gender-based discrimination, the court should use a strict standard of judicial scrutiny for laws that used sex as a classification.

A women's right to equal beer?

In Craig v. Boren, a 1976 case, Ginsburg took a roundabout road to protecting women's rights by arguing that women shouldn't be allowed to purchase beer at an earlier age than men. The law in question was an Oklahoma statute that allowed women to purchase low-beer at age 18 but that forbade men to purchase it before they turned 21.

Ginsburg filed an amicus brief on behalf of the ACLU, honing in on the old-fashioned gender stereotypes embodied by the law. The court agreed, determining for the first time that laws that hinged on sex should pass "intermediate scrutiny"-a standard of judicial review that hinged on whether the law was related to a legitimate governmental objective. There are no fair trials if Jury Duty is optional for women.

In 1979, Ginsburg argued Duren v. Missouri, a case in which a Missouri man accused of murder argued he couldn't get a fair trial because of a law that made jury service optional for women. She told the court that such exemptions didn't just make the jury pool unfair; it devalued women's contributions to juries.

The Court agreed 8-1, and held that the underrepresentation of women on local juries was due to their exclusion from the jury selection process. "Exempting all women because of the...domestic responsibilities of some women is insufficient justification for their disproportionate exclusion," the court ruled.

Fanny Carrier/AFP/Getty Images

Equal Pay for Equal Work-Ginsburg joins the fight from behind the bench.

Ginsburg had argued for equal rights for women as an attorney. As a Justice, she argued just as eloquently from behind the bench, even setting the stage for groundbreaking legislation. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Lily Ledbetter sued her employer for what she alleged was discriminatory pay. Though she started out at the same salary as her male coworkers, by the end of their tenure at Goodyear, she made thousands less a year than other men at her job. Ledbetter claimed this was because of discriminatory employee evaluations and sued Goodyear based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which holds that covered employers can't discriminate on the basis of gender, and the Equal Pay Act.

The case hinged on whether Ledbetter had the right to sue years after the alleged discrimination took place. The 5-4 majority held that she didn't file her claim in a timely manner. But Ginsburg and three of her colleagues disagreed. In her 2007 dissent, which she read from the bench (a rare move for any justice), she argued that the Civil Rights Act's 180-day time limit shouldn't apply in the case of discriminatory pay since gender-based discrimination can happen gradually. "A worker knows immediately if she is denied a promotion or transfer," said Ginsburg. "Compensation disparities, in contrast, are often hidden from sight."

This "cramped" interpretation of the law, she argued, was incompatible with the law's purpose. "The ball is in Congress' court." Congress took up Ginsburg's battle cry. In 2009, President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to reset the statute of limitations on equal-pay lawsuits with every paycheck.

Ginsburg stood firm on a woman's right to choose.

Throughout her time on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg stood firm on a woman's right to have an abortion. In her 2016 concurrence to the Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt opinion, in which the Court ruled that Texas cannot restrict abortion services that unduly burden women who seek an abortion, she delivered a rousing defense of a woman's right to choose.

She did so alone. No other justice signed on to her concurrence, in which she wrote that "many medical procedures, including childbirth," are far more dangerous than abortion and said that the Texas law restricting abortions was "beyond rational belief." The law "cannot survive judicial inspection," she wrote in the scathing document. The verdict was seen as a victory for women's reproductive rights, and another example of Ginsburg's staunch defense of women.
READ MORE: Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Her Life and Legacy

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Landmark Opinions on Women's Rights

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From her lively questions to her scathing legal writing to her black velvet "dissent collar" she wore to indicate her disapproval of an opinion, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg built her career on the fight for women's rights.

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How Americans Have Voted Through History: From Voices to Screens

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How Americans Have Voted Through History: From Voices to Screens

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Voting is the cornerstone of American democracy, but the United States Constitution doesn't say exactly how Americans should cast their ballots in elections. Article 1, Section 4 simply states that it's up to each state to determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." Over the past 200 years, the mechanics of voting have evolved from open-air "voice votes" to touch screen digital consoles.

Voice Voting

For the first 50 years of American elections, most voting wasn't done in private and voters didn't even make their choice on a paper ballot. Instead, those with the right to vote (only white men at the time) went to the local courthouse and publicly cast their vote out loud.

Known as " viva voce " or voice voting, this conspicuous form of public voting was the law in most states through the early 19th century and Kentucky kept it up as late as 1891. As voters arrived at the courthouse, a judge would have them swear on a Bible that they were who they said they were and that they hadn't already voted. Once sworn in, the voter would call out his name to the clerk and announce his chosen candidates in each race.

Campaigning and carousing were allowed at the polling place, and a drunken carnival atmosphere often accompanied early American elections, which might explain why elections in the voice-voting era commanded turnout rates as high as 85 percent.

The First Paper Ballots

The first paper ballots began appearing in the early 19th century, but they weren't standardized or even printed by government elections officials. In the beginning, paper ballots were nothing more than scraps of paper upon which the voter scrawled his candidates' names and dropped into the ballot box. Newspapers began to print out blank ballots with the titles of each office up for vote which readers could tear out and fill in with their chosen candidates.

Then the political parties got savvy. By the mid-19th century, state Republican or Democratic party officials would distribute pre-printed fliers to voters listing only their party's candidates for office. They were called Republican and Democratic "tickets" because the small rectangles of paper resembled 19th-century train tickets. Party faithful could legally use the pre-printed ticket as their actual ballot making it easier than ever to vote straight down the party line.
READ MORE: Vote-by-Mail Programs Date Back to the Civil War WATCH: Voting Tech
The Australian Paper Ballot

Partisan paper ballots ruled the second half of the 19th-century, leading to frequent accusations of voter fraud and calls for election reform. The solution came from Australia, which pioneered the first standardized, government-printed paper ballot in 1858.

The so-called Australian paper ballot, which was printed with the names of all candidates and handed to voters at the polling place, was first adopted in the United States by New York and Massachusetts in 1888.

The First Voting Machines

In the late 19th-century, Jacob H. Myers invented his lever-operated "Automatic Booth" voting machine, an engineering marvel that would come to dominate American elections from 1910 through 1980.

Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa, has researched the history of voting machines and concludes that Myers' groundbreaking contraption had more moving parts than any other machine of its day, including the automobile. These early voting machines weighed hundreds of pounds, cost thousands of dollars and would be installed in the corner of the local town hall for decades.

Voting on one of these lever machines was easy. Each candidate for each race had a small lever next to his or her name and Americans voted by pulling down the levers of their chosen candidates. If they wanted to vote along a single party line, they could pull one lever that automatically selected the Republican or Democratic candidates.

But inside the machine, the vote-counting process was incredibly complex, says Jones. There were 200 or more levers on the face of the machine, and behind each lever were mechanisms that prevented the vote from being counted until the final lever was pulled (in case a voter changed their mind). The straight party levers had to be linked to every candidate lever on the ticket and none of it required a single watt of electricity.

"The only power required was muscle power to pull down the small levers to vote for candidates and then more muscle power to move the great big lever that opened and closed the curtain," says Jones.

Unbeknownst to most voters, the action of opening the curtain on the voting booth was what finally counted the votes and reset the machine for the next voter.

"These machines inspired extraordinary public confidence because of their sheer physicality," says Jones, who says that Myers' company, Automatic Voting Machines, dominated 80 percent of the market. "But behind the scenes, it's not clear that confidence was justified."

Lever machines were mechanical, and a single missing tooth on a gear was known to cause serious miscounts that were rarely caught by election officials. And Jones says that the machines could be rigged with something as innocuous as the tip of a graphite pencil.

Punch Cards and 'Hanging Chads'

The first punch card voting systems came out in the 1960s, when companies like IBM made punch cards look like the future of the computer age. The great innovation of punch cards, Jones says, was that ballots could be counted by computers, which could then produce instantaneous vote tallies on election night, something voters now take for granted.

But these systems also had drawbacks, which became painfully clear during the infamous Florida recount of the 2000 presidential election. That's when Americans were introduced to new terms like "dimpled chads," "pregnant chads" and "hanging chads."

A chad is the small rectangle of paper that's popped out of a punch card when the voter makes their selection. The problems start when a chad isn't fully detached (a hanging chad) or only partially pushed in (a pregnant or dimpled chad).

During the drawn-out Florida recounts, election officials had to examine each punch card ballot by hand to determine if hanging or dimpled chads should be counted or thrown out.
READ MORE: How the 2000 Election Came Down to a Supreme Court Decision

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Voting by 'iPad'

In the wake of the Florida recount, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which mandated higher standards for the voting equipment used in federal elections.

"The Help America Vote Act assumed that touch screen technology was going to be the future of voting," says Jones, "and in the early 2000s, there was a big wave of adoption of touch screen voting machines, and then a big backlash."

Even though states and municipalities spent millions of dollars upgrading their voting equipment, not all of the new touch screen voting machines were created equal, says Jones, and software glitches produced some glaring errors in voter tallies. And in the 2016 presidential election, electronic voting machines in 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers.

As a result, several states have scrapped their expensive touch screen voting machines and switched back to paper-based ballots.

The 'Scantron' of Voting

Soon after the first punch card voting machines hit the market in the 1960s, so did a competing voting technology called optical scanning machines. Jones says these voting machines were directly inspired by the fill-in-the-bubble scannable forms used to automatically grade standardized tests.

With fears over hacked voting machines and more states encouraging early voting by mail, optical scanning technology is now the most popular way to cast a vote in America. Fillable paper ballots can easily be mailed out to voters, reducing the need for polling place volunteers and greatly expanding the time frame for voting beyond election day.

Even better, optical scanning technology is cheap, Jones says, and there are no chads.
READ MORE: These US Elections Saw the Highest Voter Turnout Rates

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How Americans Have Voted Through History: From Voices to Screens

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Voting is the cornerstone of American democracy, but the United States Constitution doesn't say exactly how Americans should cast their ballots in elections. Article 1, Section 4 simply states that it's up to each state to determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections."

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Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month | BrainPOP News

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Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month | BrainPOP News

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Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month | BrainPOP News

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Women's history is full of trailblazers in the fight for equality in the United States. From Abigail Adams imploring her husband to "remember the ladies" when envisioning a government for the American colonies, to suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fighting for women's right to vote, to the rise of feminism and Hillary Clinton becoming the first female nominee for president by a major political party, American women have long fought for equal footing throughout the nation's history.

And while some glass ceilings have been shattered (see: Title IX), others remain. But progress continues to be made. As Clinton said while accepting her nomination, "When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit."

Below is a timeline of notable events in U.S. women's history.

Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth

March 31, 1776: In a letter to her husband, Founding Father John Adams, future first lady Abigail Adams makes a plea to him and the Continental Congress to "remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

July 19-20, 1848: In the first women's rights convention organized by women, the Seneca Falls Convention is held in New York, with 300 attendees, including organizers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Sixty-eight women and 32 men (including Frederick Douglass) sign the Declaration of Sentiments, which sparked decades of activism, eventually leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.
READ MORE: Why the 19th Amendment Did Not Guarantee All Women the Right to Vote
January 23, 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman to graduate from medical school and become a doctor in the United States. Born in Bristol, England, she graduated from Geneva College in New York with the highest grades in her entire class.

May 29, 1851: A formerly enslaved worker turned abolitionist and women's rights activist, Sojourner Truth delivers her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. "And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

Contemporaneous reports of Truth's speech did not include this slogan, and quoted Truth in standard English. In later years, this slogan was further distorted to "Ain't I a Woman?", reflecting the false belief that as a formerly enslaved woman, Truth would have had a Southern accent. Truth was, in fact, a New Yorker.
READ MORE: Early Women's Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage
Suffrage Movement, 19th Amendment

May 15, 1869: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton found the National Woman Suffrage Association, which coordinated the national suffrage movement. In 1890, the group teamed with the American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

October 16, 1916: Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the United States. Located in Brownsville, Brooklyn, her clinic was deemed illegal under the "Comstock Laws" forbidding birth control, and the clinic was raided on October 26, 1916. When she had to close two additional times due to legal threats, she closed the clinic and eventually founded the American Birth Control League in 1921-the precursor to today's Planned Parenthood.

April 2, 1917: Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a longtime activist with the National Woman Suffrage Association, is sworn in as the first woman elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives.

Aug. 18, 1920: Ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is completed, declaring "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." It is nicknamed "The Susan B. Anthony Amendment" in honor of her work on behalf of women's suffrage.

Rosa Parks, Civil Rights, Equal Pay

May 9, 1960: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the first commercially produced birth control pill in the world, allowing women to control when and if they have children. Margaret Sanger initially commissioned " the pill " with funding from heiress Katherine McCormick.

July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson, signs the Civil Rights Act into law; Title VII bans employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin or sex.

June 30, 1966: Betty Friedan, author of 1963's The Feminine Mystique, helps found the National Organization for Women (NOW), using, as the organization now states, "grassroots activism to promote feminist ideals, lead societal change, eliminate discrimination, and achieve and protect the equal rights of all women and girls in all aspects of social, political, and economic life."
READ MORE: Six Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement
Title IX, Battle of the Sexes

Sandra Day O'Connor, Sally Ride

July 7, 1981: Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in by President Ronald Reagan as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She retires in 2006, after serving for 24 years.

June 18 1983: Flying on the Space Shuttle Challenger, Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

March 12, 1993: Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Janet Reno is sworn in as the first female attorney general of the United States.

Sept. 13, 1994: Clinton signs the Violence Against Women Act as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, providing funding for programs that help victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, stalking and other gender-related violence.

Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris

The daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris served as California's first Black female attorney general and won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. She made her own unsuccessful presidential bid before being selected by former vice president Joe Biden as his running mate.
READ MORE: 7 Women Leaders That Were Elected to Highest Office

Sources

Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United States, National Women's History Alliance

Seneca Falls Convention, Library of Congress

Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman?" Sojourner Truth Memorial

Woman Suffrage, National Geographic Society

Suffragists Unite: National American Woman Suffrage Association, National Women's History Museum

A record number of women will be serving in the new Congress. PEWResearch.org.

A List of Firsts for Women In This Year's Midterm Elections. NPR.org.

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From a plea to a founding father, to the suffragists to Title IX, to the first female political figures, women have blazed a steady trail towards equality in the United States. Explore famous firsts and figures in women's history with this timeline.

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Park Avenue Armory Celebrates Women’s Suffrage With 100 Artists

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Park Avenue Armory Celebrates Women’s Suffrage With 100 Artists

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One hundred years ago, the ratification of the 19th Amendment granted (some) women the right to vote. On Thursday, the Park Avenue Armory announced that it has invited 10 cultural institutions in New York City to commission 100 women artists to create new work that both celebrates and interrogates the history of women's suffrage.

The project, called "100 Years | 100 Women," was conceived of in partnership with National Black Theater and also involves Apollo Theater, the Juilliard School, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, the Laundromat Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of the Moving Image, National Sawdust, New York University and Urban Bush Women. Each will commission 10 artists.

The artists' names will be announced on Feb. 15 as part of the Armory's annual " Culture in a Changing America " symposium. The commissioned projects - which will include dance, film, photography, visual arts and performance - will be showcased in the Armory's Wade Thompson Drill Hall and reception rooms on May 16.

The image of women's suffrage is often predominantly white and doesn't usually recognize the work of women of color like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Victoria Earle Mathews, Carie Langston Hughes, and Mabel Ping-Hua Lee - and indigenous women like Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin.

"Artists will be looking at who is missing in the picture to bring them forward and amplify their participation," said Avery Willis Hoffman, program director at the Armory.

Sade Lythcott, chief executive of National Black Theater, said the project is an incredible opportunity. "This is our present pulse, our day to day mission: knocking down these walls and shining lights in the darkest corners of our own stories," she said.

"100 Years | 100 Women" builds on the Armory's conversation series, " Interrogations of Form," which brings together artists, scholars, activists and community members.

Recent large-scale gatherings included " Black Artists Retreat 2019: Sonic Imagination," in which more than 300 black artists and allies convened; a Lenape Pow Wow in 2018, the first gathering of Lenape leaders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; and " The Shape of Things" a 2017 event focused on the political and social climate in America, curated by the former Armory artist-in-residence Carrie Mae Weems.

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Park Avenue Armory Celebrates Women's Suffrage With 100 Artists (Published 2020)

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One hundred years ago, the ratification of the 19th Amendment granted (some) women the right to vote. On Thursday, the Park Avenue Armory announced that it has invited 10 cultural institutions in New York City to commission 100 women artists to create new work that both celebrates and interrogates the history of women's suffrage.

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Since 1991, dozens of cities, several universities, and a growing number of states have adopted Indigenous Peoples' Day, a holiday that celebrates the history and contributions of Native Americans.

Not by coincidence, the occasion usually falls on Columbus Day, the second Monday in October, or replaces the holiday entirely. As of 2021, the holiday is observed or honored by states including Virginia, Maine, Texas, New Mexico, Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Wisconsin, as well as South Dakota, which celebrates Native Americans' Day, Hawaii, which celebrates Discoverers' Day, and Alabama, which celebrates American Indian Heritage Day.

In 2021, President Biden became the first-ever president to issue a proclamation on Indigenous Peoples' Day, writing, "Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples' resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society."

Why replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day? Activists have long argued that holidays, statues, and other memorials to Columbus sanitize his actions-which include the enslavement of Native Americans-while giving him credit for "discovering" a place where people already lived.

"Columbus Day is not just a holiday, it represents the violent history of colonization in the Western hemisphere," says Leo Killsback, a professor of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.

Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1937, in part because of efforts by Roman Catholic Italian Americans. During the late 19th and early 20th century, members of the stigmatized ethnic and religious group successfully campaigned to establish a Columbus Day in order to place Catholic Italians, like Christopher Columbus, into American history. In doing so, they edged out people of Anglo-Saxon descent who wanted a federal holiday honoring Leif Erikson as the first European to reach the Americas.
READ MORE: Christopher Columbus: How The Explorer's Legend Grew-and Then Drew Fire

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But decades later, the question of which European got here "first" is beside the point. "Indigenous Peoples' Day represents a much more honest and fair representation of American values," writes Killsback, who is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of southeastern Montana.

The day also represents a subject that many American students can go through school without ever learning much about. In a 2015 op-ed, Shannon Speed, director of the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Chickasaw tribal citizen, wrote that "virtually none of my university students has had any education whatsoever in the history of this country's treatment of the 10 million or so people who lived here before Europeans arrived."

Indigenous Peoples' Day can't fully address the erasure of Native American history from public education on its own. But it offers a focus to this history in schools, where many history textbooks leave out Native Americans or sanitize white colonizer's treatment of them. When the city of Austin adopted Indigenous Peoples' Day in October 2017, the resolution stated that the city wanted to encourage schools to teach this history.

In her op-ed, Speed wrote of her students' common belief in the "vanishing Indian," meaning that her students often think of Native Americans as people who lived in the past rather than living people who continue to practice their cultures today.

In Berkeley, for example, the Indigenous Peoples' Day Committee celebrated the holiday's 25th anniversary in the city with dancing, food, and songs from local Native American tribes. Berkeley was the first city to adopt Indigenous Peoples' Day back in 1991, and it continues to mark the holiday by highlighting both the history and contemporary culture of Native peoples.
READ MORE: Native American History Timeline

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Since 1991, dozens of cities, several universities, and a growing number of states have adopted Indigenous Peoples' Day, a holiday that celebrates the history and contributions of Native Americans. Not by coincidence, the occasion usually falls on Columbus Day, the second Monday in October, or replaces the holiday entirely.

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The Roots of Anti-Asian Hate in America | Past Forward

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The Roots of Anti-Asian Hate in America | Past Forward

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The Roots of Anti-Asian Hate in America | Past Forward

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Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery

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Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery

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There's a map, made more than 150 years ago using 1860 census data, that pops up periodically on the internet. On two yellowed, taped-together sheets of paper, the counties of the Southern U.S. are shaded to reflect the percentage of inhabitants who were enslaved at the time. Bolivar County, Mississippi, is nearly black on the map, with 86.7 printed on it. Greene County, Alabama: 76.5. Burke, Georgia: 70.6. The map is one of the first attempts to translate U.S. census data into cartographic form and is one of several maps of the era that tried to make sense of the deep divisions between North and South, slave states and free.

But the reason the map resurfaces so frequently is not just its historical relevance. Rather, it's because the shading so closely matches visualizations of many modern-day data sets. There is the stream of blue voters in counties on solidly red land in the 2016 presidential election, or differences in television viewing patterns. There's research on the profound lack of economic mobility in some places, and on life expectancy at birth.

On major health metrics in the U.S., the shaded counties on the antebellum map still stand out today. Maps of the modern plagues of health disparities - rural hospital closings, medical provider shortages, poor education outcomes, poverty and mortality - all glow along this Southern corridor. (There are other hot spots, as well, most notably several Native American reservations.) The region, known as the Black Belt, also features clearly on a new interactive created by FiveThirtyEight using mortality projections from researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The projections show that, while mortality is declining nationally, including among those who live in the Black Belt, large disparities in outcomes still exist. Over the next several weeks, we'll be looking at some of the causes of these disparities in the Black Belt and talking to the communities they affect.

Though these health outcomes are associated with race, race is not the cause of disease. "There are certain genetic factors, of course," said Ali Mokdad, one of the IHME researchers, who previously oversaw one of the largest public health surveys in the U.S. "But ... we like to say, 'Diseases don't know race.'" Instead, Mokdad said things such as racism, economic deprivation and poor education - measures that together are part of what is called socioeconomic status - are largely to blame.

The Black Belt was the origin and center of not only Black America, but also of rural Black America. Today, more than 80 percent of rural black Americans live in the states that form the Black Belt. Black men in the region routinely have mortality rates 50 percent higher than the national average.

In 1860, when 76.5 percent of the people in Greene County were enslaved, the entire population totaled more than 30,000. Today, the county has less than a third the number of people it did back then, but blacks still constitute more than 80 percent.

The Rev. Christopher Spencer is tall and thickly built with a bald head and narrow-rimmed glasses. His presence is large, but never more so than when he's swaying in church robes, preaching on a Sunday morning. His church, St. Matthew Watson Missionary Baptist, is tucked away in a clearing in the woods of Greene County, just off a country stretch of U.S. Highway 43 and about 30 miles from where he grew up.

The church, which recently celebrated its centennial, still has about 130 members despite the shrinking of the area's population. Preaching is Spencer's passion, but he also works as a director of community development at the University of Alabama, helping recruit people for studies and pushing for jobs and opportunities in the Black Belt.

The Black Belt moniker first referenced the rich, fertile soil that millions of African slaves were forced to work, their labor making the European settlers some of the wealthiest people in the world. By the turn of the 20th century, the name had come to identify rural counties with a high percentage of African-American residents. "The term seems to be used wholly in a political sense. That is, to designate counties where the black people outnumber the white," wrote Booker T. Washington in his 1901 book, "Up From Slavery: An Autobiography."

The Black Belt is filled with complicated realities. It was the center of the civil rights movement but still has some of the most consistently segregated schools in the country. White Europeans wanting to reap from its verdant soil forced millions of slaves to the area, but today healthy food is hard to find. Deeply rooted social networks tie people to the land and community, but poverty and racism led millions to leave the area in one of the largest internal migrations in human history.

Reporters often illuminate the problems of the U.S. health care system by looking to outliers, the least healthy places, such as the state of Mississippi or a parish in Louisiana. That makes sense; states and local governments are largely responsible for the education, insurance, hospitals and economics that drive health outcomes. But in the case of the Black Belt, those borders obscure the broader pattern: rural, Southern black Americans who live in communities founded on slavery routinely have some of the worst health outcomes in the country.

Some recent media coverage has focused on a disturbing rise in mortality among U.S. whites with a high-school education. A much-publicized series of papers by Anne Case and Angus Deaton showed that mortality for whites with a high school education or less is increasing and included a chart showing that it is now greater than mortality for blacks. The rise in mortality made headlines and is a concerning trend worthy of study, but the headlines obscured several important facts, chief among them that the chart showed mortality for all U.S. blacks, not only those who also have a high school education or less. After the authors were criticized for leaving blacks off a different chart in one of the papers, they told The Washington Post "the reason it's not there - which we explain - is that black mortality is so high it doesn't fit on the graph."

In other words, the trends - an increase in mortality for some whites, a decrease for most blacks - are important, but so are the absolute differences, and blacks continue to die younger than people in other groups.

Greene County, home to St. Matthew, is fairly typical in Alabama's Black Belt: 55 percent of children live in poverty, and the unemployment rate is 10.6 percent, more than double the national rate. There are primary care physicians in Eutaw but residents say they must travel to distant Tuscaloosa for most specialty care.

Calvin Knott drives the 12 miles from his home in Forkland, in the southern part of the county, to attend church at St. Matthew. After decades working at the area's power company, he's spending his retirement driving a bus that takes people to and from medical appointments in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. Most of the passengers are on Medicaid, he said. The insurance program for low-income people will pay the cost of transportation to some appointments, but Knott said he knows a lot of other people without insurance who just don't go to the doctor.

Under the Affordable Care Act, states can expand their Medicaid programs to include everyone earning less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, but only two of the states that form the Black Belt, Louisiana and Arkansas, chose to do so. Knott finds that disappointing. "It wouldn't benefit me, but I'd be happy for my taxes to go to helping other people," Knott said.

Experts say a long history of racism and poverty has left the region short on resources and high on risk factors. Smoking and poor diets, for example, likely contribute to many causes of mortality. But, many experts argue that these so-called lifestyle factors shouldn't simply be viewed as choices people make that keep them unhealthy and that they're only a small part of the bigger picture.

Late last year, Army veteran Jimmy Edison stood up at St. Matthew and asked the congregation to pray for him. He was having another procedure in Tuscaloosa that week, something related to the open-heart surgery he'd had several years before. The church had been supportive in recent years, sending food to the house and praying for him and his wife, Dionne, after Jimmy's heart trouble started, and they'd been moved by the warmth of the congregation to become members. After the service, Edison listed the bad habits that had led to his heart condition. He'd started drinking heavily on his days off in the Army, smoked since he was a teenager and always been a self-declared troublemaker who lived life hard.

After a 2010 heart attack, Jimmy's drinking was so bad that he said they gave him beer at the VA hospital, afraid he'd get delirium tremens. Even so, he said his diet was the hardest habit to change. "I was a prolific drinker and smoker, and I had no problem giving that up. But the fried food, that's the real problem," Edison said. Sitting in the fellowship hall after the service, he described in glorifying detail the fried pork chops he missed so dearly, before explaining that his mother had also suffered from hypertension, diabetes and heart diseases. That family history has him convinced that there's a genetic factor to his heart disease, though his diet and drinking likely made things worse. "It was like, I knew I was at risk, but I chose to play Russian roulette. I can't say I didn't know," Edison said.

The stress that evolves from years of social disadvantage can reinforce a host of habits that are contributing to the highest incidence of diabetes and obesity in the country, said Alana Knudson, co-director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis at NORC, a research organization based at the University of Chicago. Food is "how you self-medicate. Sometimes we talk about people like they are doing this to themselves. But the reality is a lot of these people have endured some pretty challenging situations."

Cultural norms play a role as well, and residents of the Black Belt are less likely to get regular exercise than people just about anywhere else in the country. Some of this is environmental: Humid, 100-degree summer days combined with intermittent electricity make it hard to do much of anything, let alone go for a walk. Monika Safford, a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, spent 12 years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researching diabetes and heart disease. She said that in surveys she's done in the Black Belt, many people respond that they get no exercise whatsoever on most days. "It was common when we were doing trials for people to tell us they drove down the driveway to get their mail," Safford said.

People in the Black Belt don't have higher mortality rates for every cause of death, but the causes that disproportionately affect them are telling. A growing body of research has found that generations of economic and social disadvantage can increase the risk of neonatal mortality. As extremely effective treatments for HIV were developed, mortality related to AIDS plummeted across the country, but it remains higher in the Black Belt than in most other places ( as does HIV prevalence).

And cervical cancer, largely preventable, is more prevalent and deadlier in the region than in the nation at large.

Down the road from St. Matthew, Doreen Smith lives in a trailer left to her by her grandparents. She went to a doctor in Demopolis in 1992 when she was pregnant with her first child at age 16 and has taken each of her children to him since. She's been told that to get prenatal care, she needs to go to Tuscaloosa, but with only intermittent access to a car, she said that's always been too far. "Oh no, I'm not going all the way to Tuscaloosa."

As a result, prenatal vitamins and the occasional checkup are the only care she's received for most of her pregnancies, she said. Both teenage pregnancy and lack of prenatal care are considered risk factors for low-birthweight babies and other health concerns. But some studies have found that prenatal care doesn't explain racial disparities in infant mortality, which is higher among newborns of middle-age black women than it is for newborns of white teenagers. Poverty, stress and trauma, as part of the cumulative health of a mother before and after birth, likely also factor into pregnancy outcomes.

But health in the Black Belt hasn't been stagnant. While infant mortality is higher there than almost anywhere in the country, it's a fraction of what it was a few decades ago. The same goes for heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S. Those improvements are attributed to several changes, including desegregation, better housing and education. In fact, one of the most robust literatures on the effects of racism on health comes from improvements to infant mortality among black babies after desegregation. Government programs have also played a role, namely the birth of the community health center movement and Medicaid, which was created in 1965 to cover pregnant women, children and people with disabilities. Both government efforts coincided with the civil rights movement and other programs that sought to undo the effects of racism and poverty throughout the country, particularly the rural South.

But there is still a lot of need today. Spencer is trying to tackle it from two angles: helping people change their habits and working to stabilize and improve struggling rural hospitals. They are long-standing issues, but he remains hopeful they can change. "We just really have to galvanize interest in the area," he said.

In several upcoming articles, we'll detail the complicated history of safety-net programs, such as Medicaid, in the area and illustrate how lack of access to health care continues to be an issue. Improving health in the Black Belt means recognizing the root causes: persistent poverty and lack of economic mobility, the challenges of living in rural America and a changing economic landscape that requires better education. It will also mean wrestling with social demons, including some that go back centuries.
Reporting for this story was supported by the Center for Health Journalism's Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-being.

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Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery

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There's a map, made more than 150 years ago using 1860 census data, that pops up periodically on the internet. On two yellowed, taped-together sheets of paper, the counties of the Southern U.S. are shaded to reflect the percentage of inhabitants who were enslaved at the time.

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The Female World War II Codebreaker Who Busted Nazi Spy Rings

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The Female World War II Codebreaker Who Busted Nazi Spy Rings

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The Female World War II Codebreaker Who Busted Nazi Spy Rings

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Elizebeth Friedman’s codebreaking helped save the Queen Mary and capture a Nazi spy ringleader in Latin America.

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Why Suffragists Helped Send Women Doctors to WWI's Front Lines?

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Why Suffragists Helped Send Women Doctors to WWI's Front Lines?

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Why Suffragists Helped Send Women Doctors to WWI’s Front Lines

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Doctors of the Women’s Oversea Hospitals Unit operated under bomb and gas attacks. And their all-female support teams built new hospitals—even the coffins.

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Clara Barton: 7 Facts about the Civil War Nurse and Medical Pioneer

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Clara Barton: 7 Facts about the Civil War Nurse and Medical Pioneer

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Clara Barton, a fearless humanitarian who helped revolutionize battlefield medicine, is celebrated for her lifelong dedication to helping others. She was a teacher, a nurse, an abolitionist, and a campaigner for women's rights. And though it's been more than 200 years since her birth on Christmas day, 1821, she remains one of the most honored women in American history.

When Barton died in 1912 at the age of 91, the New York Times wrote, "She was a woman of remarkable executive skill, of unbounded enthusiasm, inspired by humane ideas.... Her name became a household word, associated in the public mind with goodness and mercy."

Explore 7 extraordinary facts about this remarkable woman.

1. She was painfully shy.

Barton was so shy as a child that her mother consulted L.N. Fowler, a noted phrenologist, to examine her skull and offer advice. He recommended Clara teach, a career that employed relatively few women at the time. Undaunted, Barton listened and became a teacher in her hometown of North Oxford, Massachusetts, at the age of 17. She encouraged her students without harsh discipline and was praised for it.

"Child that I was, I did not know that the surest test of discipline is its absence," she later wrote. "Her compassion for others and her willingness to help them always won out over her shyness," said David Price, Executive Director of the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum in Washington, D.C.

2. She opened one of the first free public schools in New Jersey.

While visiting a friend in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1852, Barton found many poor, school-age boys on the streets.Determined to help them, she received permission to start a free public school, the first in Bordentown. By the end of the year, the school had grown from six students to several hundred. But when the school proved a success, the board hired a male principal to run it at twice Barton's salary. Barton left in protest.

She later said,"I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay."

Matthew Brady/Buyenlarge/Getty Images

3. As one of the first women to work for the federal government, she fought for equal pay.

Barton moved to Washington, D.C., in 1854, and became a copyist for the U.S. Patent Office. Within a year, she was promoted to clerk, making her the first woman to receive a government appointment. She successfully lobbied to earn the same $1,400 salary as her male peers, many of whom resented women in the workplace. Her raise didn't last long. A new boss demoted her to a copyist, earning 10 cents for every 100 words.

4. Her work as a Civil War nurse and relief worker began with the Baltimore Riot.

On April 19, 1861, just weeks after the Civil War erupted, Confederate sympathizers attacked Massachusetts soldiers traveling through Baltimore, Maryland, killing four. The injured were taken to the unfinished U.S. Capitol building, close to where Barton worked at the U.S. Patent Office.

Barton rushed to help the wounded and was shocked to discover that some of the men were her former students. "They were faithful to me in their boyhood, and in their manhood faithful to their country," she said.

She quickly gathered food, medicine, and clothing from her own home and helped care for them. It was the beginning of Barton's Civil War nursing career, which earned her the name, "Angel of the Battlefield."

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

5. Barton was almost killed at the Battle of Antietam.

As Barton cradled the head of a wounded soldier at Antietam, a bullet passed through the sleeve of her dress and into her patient.

"A ball has passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through his chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest," Barton wrote. "I have never mended that hole in my sleeve."

6. She founded the Missing Soldiers Office.

At the end of the Civil War, tens of thousands of men were missing. With Lincoln's approval, Barton founded the Missing Soldiers Office to help families locate their loved ones. Of the 63,000 requests she and her small team received, they located 22,000 men, some of whom were still alive.

Barton was a woman who lived by her words, "You must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it."

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7. Barton's work convinced the International Red Cross to expand its role to include peacetime disaster relief.

After witnessing and joining the efforts of the International Red Cross in Europe to help victims of war, Barton founded the American Red Cross in 1881. She led several relief efforts, including those of the Mississippi River and Ohio River floods. Her innovative work not only helped many Americans. It convinced the International Red Cross to expand its mission to include helping those affected by natural disasters.

Price said, "The only reason we have a Red Cross today that responds to natural disasters and emergencies is because of this lady and her determination to help her fellow man."
WATCH: Women's History Videos on HISTORY Vault

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Clara Barton: 7 Facts about the Civil War Nurse and Medical Pioneer

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Clara Barton, a fearless humanitarian who helped revolutionize battlefield medicine, is celebrated for her lifelong dedication to helping others. She was a teacher, a nurse, an abolitionist, and a campaigner for women's rights. And though it's been more than 200 years since her birth on Christmas day, 1821, she remains one of the most honored women in American history.

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How Lincoln and Grant's Partnership Won the Civil War?

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How Lincoln and Grant's Partnership Won the Civil War?

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President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant didn't meet often in person. But their mutual respect and trust grew deep over the final year of the Civil War as they together steered America and its armies through the most convulsive period in the nation's history.

In his memoirs, Grant confessed that he was "by no means a 'Lincoln man'" in the years before the firing of the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. By the time General Grant accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, however, the cauldron of four years of war had forged a strong partnership between Grant and Lincoln -one that, for all intents and purposes, saved the Union.

"I think it was Grant's aggressive, fighting spirit that endeared him to Lincoln," says Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of . Not only was the general a self-starter, but he had a quiet self-confidence and a refreshing willingness to accept full responsibility for his battlefield defeats. "Too many of Lincoln's generals were quick to scapegoat him for their failures," says Chernow, "whereas Grant, as a matter of both pride and honesty, never blamed the president."

Similar life stories bonded the men as well. Both overcame hardscrabble upbringings in the American heartland, married into slaveholding families and suffered periodic bouts of depression. With their modest Midwestern backgrounds came a shared democratic ethos: "Grant put on no airs with his men and treated officers and ordinary soldiers with similar courtesy," Chernow says. "This appealed to Lincoln, who also showed a common touch with soldiers."

Grant's ascent in the west

With his prairie roots, Lincoln knew that the Civil War's western theater and control of the Mississippi River would be vital to Union success, so Grant's early victories in the region caught the president's eye. While Lincoln seethed during 1862 at the plodding pace of General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac, he admired Grant's swift action in capturing Fort Donelson and Fort Henry in Tennessee.

When his troops were taken by surprise at the bloody Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 and floundered for months outside Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant faced sharp charges of incompetence-and rumors of inebriation. A Republican senator denounced Grant to Lincoln as "bloodthirsty, reckless of human life and utterly unfit to lead troops." The president stood by Grant and, by some accounts, even joked about sending a barrel of whatever Grant was drinking to the other generals. Nonetheless, Lincoln made sure to have his assistant secretary of war, Charles Dana, personally confirm his competence and sobriety.
EXPLORE: Ulysses S. Grant: An Interactive Map of His Key Civil War Battles

Corbis/Getty Images

In a possibly apocryphal tale, Republican politician and newspaper editor Alexander McClure reported that after he argued for Grant's removal, Lincoln told him, "I can't spare this man. He fights." Real or not, the line has endured, largely because it so aptly captures why the president valued Grant. "Many Union generals temporized and put off battles until their troops were better trained and equipped," says Chernow. "Grant recognized that such delays would benefit equally his Confederate opponents and preferred to strike quickly and capitalize on the element of surprise even when his troops weren't perfectly ready."
READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About Ulysses S. Grant
Victory at Vicksburg

With his capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, Grant seized the Confederacy's last bastion on the Mississippi River. After Grant's subsequent capture of Chattanooga and Knoxville, Lincoln initially resisted calls to give the general command of all Union forces because of the growing chatter that he coveted the White House for himself.

Stock Montage/Getty Images

Once Grant made it known that he had no interest in political office, however, Lincoln elevated him in March 1864 to the position of lieutenant general, a rank previously held only by George Washington and Winfield Scott (who had received a temporary brevet promotion to that rank before the war). Not until three years into the Civil War did the two men meet for the first time when Grant came to Washington, D.C., to receive his new commission. Grant recalled that Lincoln told him at their first encounter that "all he wanted or had ever wanted was someone who would take the responsibility and act."

Grant and Lincoln maintained frequent contact through the final year of the Civil War. If the taciturn general was ever critical of the commander-in-chief, he bit his tongue. "No general could want better backing, for the president was a man of great wisdom and moderation," Grant recalled. When he decided to pursue Lee's army after brutal losses in the Battle of the Wilderness, he dispatched a New York Tribune reporter with a message for Lincoln. "He told me I was to tell you, Mr. President, that there will be no turning back," the correspondent reported. Thrilled to finally have a general he believed was taking the fight to the enemy, Lincoln kissed the reporter.
READ MORE: President Ulysses S. Grant: Known for Scandals, Overlooked for Achievements
The near miss

While Grant and Lincoln had a warm relationship, the same could not be said about their wives. When Mary Todd Lincoln flew into a jealous rage at the wife of General Edward Ord for the attention she bestowed upon the president in late March 1865, Julia Grant found herself on the receiving end of the First Lady's acid tongue when she tried to intervene.

Several weeks later, on the morning of April 14, 1865, after Lee's surrender, the president invited the Grants to accompany him and the First Lady to a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln wanted the public to see the victorious president and general together. Julia's desire to avoid spending any more time with Mary Lincoln sealed Grant's inclination to decline the invitation, and the general was not at the president's side when he was assassinated.

Tears flowed down Grant's cheek as he stood at attention next to the commander-in-chief's coffin inside the White House and mourned the loss of a friend. "My personal relations with him were as close and intimate as the nature of our respective duties would permit," Grant wrote. "To know him personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head, and for his patience and patriotism." Grant clearly had become, by all means, a "Lincoln man."

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How Lincoln and Grant's Partnership Won the Civil War

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President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant didn't meet often in person. But their mutual respect and trust grew deep over the final year of the Civil War as they together steered America and its armies through the most convulsive period in the nation's history.

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What Happens When a President Becomes Ill or Incapacitated While in Office?

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What Happens When a President Becomes Ill or Incapacitated While in Office?

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Illness can impact a president's ability to conduct the duties of office, but for most of U.S. history, protocol for what happens when a president got sick was minimal.

The Founding Fathers anticipated the need for a line of succession, and the Constitution says the vice president becomes acting president if the elected one dies, resigns or became debilitated. But it left out critical details, including who has the power to declare the president unfit to serve, when and how the president should return to office, and if the vice president should continue as president for the rest of the term or until a replacement was found.

The Line of Succession for President

The next succession act of 1886 replaced the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives with the presidential cabinet in order of rank, meaning the Secretary of State followed the Vice President in the line of succession. Lawmakers argued they would have a better executive skillset: At the time, no president pro tempore had ever served as president, while six former secretaries of state had been elected to that office.

The line of succession changed again on July 18, 1947, when President Harry Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act. It restored the 1792 rules, but switched their order: Since 1947, the line of succession for president of the United States goes from the Vice President to the Speaker of the House, then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

The 25th Amendment

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Section 1: If the President Dies or Resigns, the Vice President Becomes President
"In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President."
Section 2: The President Can Nominate a New Vice President
"Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress."
Section 3: If the President Is Ill, The Vice President Becomes Acting President
"Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President."
Section 4: If the President Is Declared Unfit to Serve, the Vice President Will Become Acting President
"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."

Long before the passage and application of the 25th amendment, numerous presidents dealt with illness or medical conditions-some openly, others in secret-while serving in office.

George Washington

The first president to fall seriously ill while in office was the nation's first president, George Washington. Two months into his first term, Washington underwent surgery for a tumor that required him to rest on his right side for six weeks. In his second year of office, Washington survived a bout of influenza that threatened his hearing and his sight, prompting him to write: "I have already had within less than a year, two severe attacks-the last worst than the first-a third more than probable will put me to sleep with my fathers; at what distance this may be I know not."

Disease ran rampant in America's early cities, and an outbreak of yellow fever in the summer of 1793 prompted Washington and the government to flee to the countryside. Washington survived, as he'd survive diphtheria, tuberculosis, smallpox, malaria, dysentery, quinsy, and carbuncle, along with many near-misses on the battlefield. He eventually died of a throat infection, but after he'd left office.
READ MORE: When the Yellow Fever Outbreak of 1793 Sent the Wealthy Fleeing Philadelphia
William Henry Harrison

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William Henry Harrison became the shortest-serving president when he died just 34 days into taking office from pneumonia he contracted on inauguration day. He was the first president to die while in office, meaning there was no precedent for Vice President John Tyler 's rise to power.

While Tyler was initially given the title "Vice President Acting President" by Congress, he sought a more permanent job title. Tyler moved into the White House and had himself sworn in as president, even giving an Inaugural Address.
READ MORE: Did William Henry Harrison's Inauguration Speech Kill Him?
Grover Cleveland

In 1893, Grover Cleveland needed surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his mouth. To avoid the attention of the press, he had the surgery performed on his friend's yacht in Long Island Sound. He had a quarter of his upper palate entirely removed, was fitted with an implant, and went back to work. The public was none the wiser.

Woodrow Wilson

Wilson's illness depleted him, and aides became worried it was hindering the president's ability to negotiate. Ultimately, Wilson relinquished his demands on French leader Georges Clemenceau, accepting the demilitarization of the Rhineland and French occupation of it for at least 15 years. The resulting Treaty of Versailles was so harsh on Germany that it contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of World War II.

It wouldn't be the last time a doctor lied about Wilson's condition: In 1919, he suffered a series of strokes that prompted his cabinet to suggest the vice president take over. First Lady Edith Wilson and the president's doctor, Cary Grayson, refused.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The United States' longest-serving president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hid the severity of his polio from the American public, fearing he would be perceived as weak. He avoided using his wheelchair during appearances to "walk" with the aid of leg braces, a cane, and usually the arm of an advisor. The press was forbidden from taking pictures of him walking-an offense the Secret Service was tasked with preventing.
READ MORE: Franklin Roosevelt's Personal Polio Crusade
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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In it, he named Nixon as the person responsible for determining whether or not Eisenhower could perform his presidential duties. The letter was not legal, and Nixon took over the duties of president only momentarily, once in 1955 after the president's heart attack and again during his 1956 surgery.

Ronald Reagan

The 25th Amendment was formally invoked for the first time on July 13, 1985, when President Ronald Reagan directed then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to perform his duties while he underwent surgery for colon cancer. Bush became acting president when Reagan was administered general anesthesia. After just under eight hours, Reagan notified the Senate that he was ready to resume his presidential duties.

George W. Bush

During his two-term presidency, George W. Bush invoked the 25th Amendment twice. On June 29, 2002, Bush invoked Section 3 of the 25th Amendment prior to going under anesthesia for a colonoscopy and briefly made Vice President Dick Cheney the acting president. He did the same again when he had another colonoscopy in 2007.

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What Happens When a President Becomes Ill or Incapacitated While in Office?

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Illness can impact a president's ability to conduct the duties of office, but for most of U.S. history, protocol for what happens when a president got sick was minimal. The Founding Fathers anticipated the need for a line of succession, and the Constitution says the vice president becomes acting president if the elected one dies, resigns or became debilitated.

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Abraham Lincoln's Most Enduring Speeches and Quotes

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Abraham Lincoln's Most Enduring Speeches and Quotes

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There's perhaps no better way to grasp Abraham Lincoln 's outsized American legacy than through his writing.

From his time as a twenty-something political hopeful to his tragic death, Lincoln was a voluminous writer, authoring hundreds of letters, speeches, debate arguments and more.

Despite very little formal schooling, the 16th president was an avid reader who from a young age understood the transformative power of words. "Words were Lincoln's way up and out of the grinding poverty into which he had been born," wrote historian and author Geoffrey Ward. "If the special genius of America was that it provided an environment in which 'every man can make himself,' as Lincoln believed, pen and ink were the tools with which he did his self-carpentering."
WATCH: Full episodes of the HISTORY Channel's documentary event, Abraham Lincoln online now.
While he often expressed himself with humor and folksy wisdom, Lincoln wasn't afraid to wade into lofty territory. His writings show how his thoughts on the thorny issues of the day-like slavery, religion, national discord-evolved over time. He penned some of America's most monumental expressions of statecraft, such as the Gettysburg Address, widely hailed for its eloquence and clarity of thought. His prose, infused with his deep love of poetry, helped him in his efforts to reach-and heal-a fractured nation.

Here are a few excerpts of Lincoln's writings, both famous and lesser-known.

On the Fractured Nation

The 'House Divided' Speech: As America expanded West and fought bitterly over whether new territories could extend the practice of slavery, Lincoln spoke out about what he saw as a growing threat to the Union. Many criticized this speech as radical, believing-mistakenly-that Lincoln was advocating for war.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." - Lincoln's acceptance of the Illinois Republican nomination to U.S. Senate, June 16, 1858

The 'Better Angels of Our Nature' speech: By the time Lincoln was first sworn into office, seven states had already seceded from the Union. During his first address as president, he tried to assure the South that slavery would not be interfered with, and to quiet the drumbeat of war by appealing to "the better angels of our nature."

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." - Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

The Gettysburg Address: Hailed as one of the most important speeches in U.S. history, Lincoln delivered his brief, 272-word address at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield, the site of more than 50,000 casualties. By alluding to the Declaration of Independence, he redefined the war as a struggle not just to preserve the Union, but for the fundamental principle of human freedom.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war... The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. - November 19, 1863

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On Religion

During his younger years, the future President remained notoriously noncommital on the topic of religion-so much so that even his close friends were unable to verify his personal faith. At times, wrote Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo, "He would actually be aggressive on the subject of unbelief," asserting that the Bible was just a book or that Jesus was an illegitimate child.

This lack of clarity on his beliefs-Was he an atheist? A skeptic?-proved a political liability early on. After failing to win election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843, a worried Lincoln expressed fears that his lack of religiosity might have been to blame:

"It was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church." -1843 letter to his friend Martin M. Morris

Lincoln won that House seat three years later, but not without his opponent, a revivalist preacher, accusing him of being a religious scoffer. Instead of dismissing the allegation, as he might have before, the future President wrote a public message directly to his constituency to deny any disrepect, while still avoiding pinning himself down to one personal faith:

"That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular." - Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity, July 31, 1846

By his first inauguration, Lincoln had evolved to making full-throated avowals of faith, even declaring that adherence to Christianity was critical to the Union's survival.

"Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty." - First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

READ MORE: Was Abraham Lincoln an Atheist?
On Racial Inequality

It might seem that the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, the president hailed as "the Great Liberator," would have clear and consistent views on racial justice and equality. Not exactly.

From the onset, Lincoln always opposed the idea and existence of slavery. As early as 1837, when addressing Congress as a newly-elected member of the Illinois General Assembly, the 28-year-old Lincoln proclaimed the institution to be "founded on both injustice and bad policy."

Nearly two decades later, he continued to reject it on moral and political grounds:

I can not but hate [the declared indifference for slavery's spread]. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticising [sic] the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest. -Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854

Nonetheless, despite his deep opposition to slavery, Lincoln did not believe in racial equality. He made this point clear during his famed debates against rival Stephen A. Douglas during their race for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races....
I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office...there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." -Lincoln-Douglas debates, September 18, 1858

Lincoln struggled to articulate a vision for how free Black Americans could integrate into white-dominated U.S. society. Under constant political pressure to offset his push for emancipation, Lincoln frequently floated the idea of resettling African Americans elsewhere -to Africa, the Caribbean or Central America. As early as 1854, he articulated this idea:

"I should not know what to do as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land." -Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854

Lincoln's views on race equality continued to evolve until his death. In his last public address, just four days before his assassination, Lincoln seemed to denounce a future in which newly freed Black Americans were barred from a chance at equal access to the American dream.

"Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men, "You are worthless, or worse-we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say, "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." -Final public speech, April 11, 1865

In that same speech, Lincoln also teased the idea of Black suffrage, particularly maddening one attendee. Listening from the crowd, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth heard the assertion and remarked, "That is the last speech he will make."
READ MORE: Check out our Abraham Lincoln content hub, with more than three dozen stories about the 16th president.

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Lincoln's Humor

An essential facet of Lincoln the man-and a huge contributor to his political success-was his witty, folksy humor and his talent for mimicry. An inveterate storyteller, Lincoln skillfully spun up puns, jokes, aphorisms and yarns to offset dicey social and political situations, ingratiate himself with hostile audiences, endear himself with the common man and separate himself from political opponents.

As a lawyer, Lincoln always made a point to speak plainly to the judge and jury, avoiding obscure or high-minded legal jargon. One day in court, another lawyer quoted a legal maxim in Latin, then asked Lincoln to affirm it. His response: "If that's Latin, you had better call another witness."

So captivating and engaging was Lincoln's banter that even his vaunted Senate opponent Stephen A. Douglas begrudgingly acknowledged its effectiveness. Douglas likened it to "a slap across my back. Nothing else-not any of his arguments or any of his replies to my questions-disturbs me. But when he begins to tell a story, I feel that I am to be overmatched."

Humor played a key role, historians say, in Lincoln's victory over Douglas in their famed 1858 debates. In one instance, he colorfully undercut Douglas's arguments for the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision as "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death."

And when hecklers followed a Douglas jibe by calling Lincoln "two-faced," the future president famously defused the attack with his famed self-deprecating humor:

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
WATCH: Abraham Lincoln: His Life and Legacy on HISTORY Vault

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Abraham Lincoln: Famous Quotes and Speeches

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There's perhaps no better way to grasp Abraham Lincoln 's outsized American legacy than through his writing. From his time as a twenty-something political hopeful to his tragic death, Lincoln was a voluminous writer, authoring hundreds of letters, speeches, debate arguments and more.

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From a 19th-century president who killed a man in a duel, to a 20th-century leader who once worked as a lifeguard, learn surprising facts about each U.S. president.

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Original or facsimile? The original Gettysburg Address bears creases in it it from when Abraham Lincoln placed it in his pocket.

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When World Events Disrupted the Olympics

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When World Events Disrupted the Olympics

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Since the opening of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, the international sports competition has only been canceled three times: once during World War I (1916) and twice during World War II (1940, 1944). Until the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, which postponed the Summer Olympic games for a year, the Olympics weathered politically charged boycotts and two separate terrorist attacks without being canceled or postponed during peacetime.

The 1916 Olympics were supposed to be hosted by the German Empire, which had built an impressive 30,000-seat stadium in Berlin for the event. But with the outbreak of war in 1914, and the eventual involvement of so many nations who sent athletes to the Olympics, the 1916 games were scrapped.
PHOTOS: WWI Soldiers Held their Own Olympics After the War
1920: Germany Disinvited

The 1920 games in Antwerp, Belgium were the first in which a nation was actively disinvited. Germany was blamed for starting World War I, and even though the country was under a new government-known as the Weimar Republic-Belgian, and later French Olympic officials banned German athletes from participating in both the 1920 and 1924 Olympics.

Twenty years after the canceled 1916 games, Germany was again due to host the Olympics in 1936, this time under the Nazi flag. In America, a coalition of Jewish and Catholic groups called on the U.S. Olympic Committee to boycott the games, but was ignored by the committee president Avery Brundage, a professed Germanophile.

Instead, the 1936 Berlin Games were allowed to go on amid a Nazi regime intent on using sport to demonstrate Adolf Hitler's theories of racial superiority. Jesse Owens, the African American track and field star, famously proved Hitler wrong, taking home four gold medals. In a lesser-known victory, India's underdog field hockey team also crushed the Germans 8-1 in the men's final.
READ MORE: The Modern Summer Olympic Games: A Timeline
World War II Leads to Two Olympic Game Cancellations

The last time the Olympics were canceled was during World War II. The 1940 summer and winter Olympics were both scheduled to be held in Japan, the first non-Western country to host the games, but Japan forfeited its rights in 1937 when it went to war with China. The 1940 games were initially rebooked for Helsinki, Finland in the summer and the German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the winter, but finally canceled in 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland.

London was supposed to host the 1944 summer Olympics, but those were summarily canceled due to the ongoing war. Same for the 1944 winter games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. London eventually hosted the 1948 games, but banned German and Japanese athletes from participation.

Since its inception in 1894, the IOC has claimed to be an apolitical and neutral body with the mission to promote international peace and understanding through sport. But critics like David Goldblatt, professor of history at Pitzer College and author of The Games: A Global History of the Olympics, point to numerous times when Olympic officials turned a blind eye to violent human rights violations in order to ensure that the games went on.
READ MORE: 8 Astounding Moments in Women's Olympic Gymnastics
Games Continued in Mexico City Despite Massacre

Mexico City is a particularly damning example. Ten days before the 1968 summer games were set to open in Mexico City, government forces opened fire on crowds of unarmed student protestors, killing hundreds if not thousands in what became known as the Tlatelolco Massacre.

"The main theme of the Mexico City games was peace with icons of the dove of peace all over the city," says Goldblatt. "The Mexican government slaughters hundreds of students and then unleashes a reign of terror and torture and disappearance, all while the games are going on, but the IOC doesn't blink an eye."

Likewise, the IOC was initially hesitant to ban Apartheid-era South Africa from the 1960 Olympics, but eventually bowed to the pressure of African nations who said they would boycott the games if whites-only South African teams were allowed to play. South Africa was eventually barred from the Olympics from 1960 until 1992, after the fall of Apartheid.

Terrorism and the Olympic Games

Even one of the darkest chapters of Olympic history didn't lead to a cancellation of the games. In 1972, an armed band of Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli compound at the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, killing two Israeli athletes and holding another nine hostage. In the ensuing standoff, all nine remaining Israeli athletes were murdered. Instead of calling off the Munich games, Olympic officials continued the competition after a two-day suspension.

The 1996 summer games in Atlanta, Georgia, were also allowed to go on after a homemade bomb exploded during a free concert in Centennial Olympic Park. Two people died in the early-morning blast and more than a hundred were injured, but only a few hours later, the president of Atlanta's Olympic organizing committee said, "The spirit of the Olympic movement mandates that we continue."
READ MORE: The Modern Summer Olympic Games: A Timeline

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When World Events Disrupted the Olympics

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Since the opening of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, the international sports competition has only been canceled three times: once during World War I (1916) and twice during World War II (1940, 1944).

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In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. When an epidemic spreads beyond a country's borders, that's when the disease officially becomes a pandemic.

Communicable diseases existed during humankind's hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities that made epidemics more possible. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, smallpox and others first appeared during this period.

READ MORE: See all pandemic coverage here.
The more civilized humans became, building cities and forging trade routes to connect with other cities, and waging wars with them, the more likely pandemics became. See a timeline below of pandemics that, in ravaging human populations, changed history.

430 B.C.: Athens

The earliest recorded pandemic happened during the Peloponnesian War. After the disease passed through Libya, Ethiopia and Egypt, it crossed the Athenian walls as the Spartans laid siege. As much as two-thirds of the population died.

The symptoms included fever, thirst, bloody throat and tongue, red skin and lesions. The disease, suspected to have been typhoid fever, weakened the Athenians significantly and was a significant factor in their defeat by the Spartans.

165 A.D.: Antonine Plague

The Antonine plague was possibly an early appearance of smallpox that began with the Huns. The Huns then infected the Germans, who passed it to the Romans and then returning troops spread it throughout the Roman empire. Symptoms included fever, sore throat, diarrhea and, if the patient lived long enough, pus-filled sores. This plague continued until about 180 A.D., claiming Emperor Marcus Aurelius as one of its victims.

250 A.D.: Cyprian Plague

Named after the first known victim, the Christian bishop of Carthage, the Cyprian plague entailed diarrhea, vomiting, throat ulcers, fever and gangrenous hands and feet.

City dwellers fled to the country to escape infection but instead spread the disease further. Possibly starting in Ethiopia, it passed through Northern Africa, into Rome, then onto Egypt and northward.

There were recurring outbreaks over the next three centuries. In 444 A.D., it hit Britain and obstructed defense efforts against the Picts and the Scots, causing the British to seek help from the Saxons, who would soon control the island.

541 A.D.: Justinian Plague

First appearing in Egypt, the Justinian plague spread through Palestine and the Byzantine Empire, and then throughout the Mediterranean.

The plague changed the course of the empire, squelching Emperor Justinian's plans to bring the Roman Empire back together and causing massive economic struggle. It is also credited with creating an apocalyptic atmosphere that spurred the rapid spread of Christianity.

Recurrences over the next two centuries eventually killed about 50 million people, 26 percent of the world population. It is believed to be the first significant appearance of the bubonic plague, which features enlarged lymphatic gland and is carried by rats and spread by fleas.

11th Century: Leprosy

Though it had been around for ages, leprosy grew into a pandemic in Europe in the Middle Ages, resulting in the building of numerous leprosy-focused hospitals to accommodate the vast number of victims.

A slow-developing bacterial disease that causes sores and deformities, leprosy was believed to be a punishment from God that ran in families. This belief led to moral judgments and ostracization of victims. Now known as Hansen's disease, it still afflicts tens of thousands of people a year and can be fatal if not treated with antibiotics.

1350: The Black Death

Responsible for the death of one-third of the world population, this second large outbreak of the bubonic plague possibly started in Asia and moved west in caravans. Entering through Sicily in 1347 A.D. when plague sufferers arrived in the port of Messina, it spread throughout Europe rapidly. Dead bodies became so prevalent that many remained rotting on the ground and created a constant stench in cities.

England and France were so incapacitated by the plague that the countries called a truce to their war. The British feudal system collapsed when the plague changed economic circumstances and demographics. Ravaging populations in Greenland, Vikings lost the strength to wage battle against native populations, and their exploration of North America halted.

1492: The Columbian Exchange

Following the arrival of the Spanish in the Caribbean, diseases such as smallpox, measles and bubonic plague were passed along to the native populations by the Europeans. With no previous exposure, these diseases devastated indigenous people, with as many as 90 percent dying throughout the north and south continents.

Upon arrival on the island of Hispaniola, Christopher Columbus encountered the Taino people, population 60,000. By 1548, the population stood at less than 500. This scenario repeated itself throughout the Americas.

In 1520, the Aztec Empire was destroyed by a smallpox infection. The disease killed many of its victims and incapacitated others. It weakened the population so they were unable to resist Spanish colonizers and left farmers unable to produce needed crops.

Research in 2019 even concluded that the deaths of some 56 million Native Americans in the 16th and 17th centuries, largely through disease, may have altered Earth's climate as vegetation growth on previously tilled land drew more CO2 from the atmosphere and caused a cooling event.
READ MORE: How Colonization's Death Toll May Have Affected Earth's Climate
1665: The Great Plague of London

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In another devastating appearance, the bubonic plague led to the deaths of 20 percent of London's population. As human death tolls mounted and mass graves appeared, hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs were slaughtered as the possible cause and the disease spread through ports along the Thames. The worst of the outbreak tapered off in the fall of 1666, around the same time as another destructive event-the Great Fire of London.

1817: First Cholera Pandemic

The first of seven cholera pandemics over the next 150 years, this wave of the small intestine infection originated in Russia, where one million people died. Spreading through feces-infected water and food, the bacterium was passed along to British soldiers who brought it to India where millions more died. The reach of the British Empire and its navy spread cholera to Spain, Africa, Indonesia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany and America, where it killed 150,000 people. A vaccine was created in 1885, but pandemics continued.

1855: The Third Plague Pandemic

Starting in China and moving to India and Hong Kong, the bubonic plague claimed 15 million victims. Initially spread by fleas during a mining boom in Yunnan, the plague is considered a factor in the Parthay rebellion and the Taiping rebellion. India faced the most substantial casualties, and the epidemic was used as an excuse for repressive policies that sparked some revolt against the British. The pandemic was considered active until 1960 when cases dropped below a couple hundred.

1875: Fiji Measles Pandemic

After Fiji ceded to the British Empire, a royal party visited Australia as a gift from Queen Victoria. Arriving during a measles outbreak, the royal party brought the disease back to their island, and it was spread further by the tribal heads and police who met with them upon their return.

Spreading quickly, the island was littered with corpses that were scavenged by wild animals, and entire villages died and were burned down, sometimes with the sick trapped inside the fires. One-third of Fiji's population, a total of 40,000 people, died.

1889: Russian Flu

The first significant flu pandemic started in Siberia and Kazakhstan, traveled to Moscow, and made its way into Finland and then Poland, where it moved into the rest of Europe. By the following year, it had crossed the ocean into North America and Africa. By the end of 1890, 360,000 had died.

1918: Spanish Flu

The avian-borne flu that resulted in 50 million deaths worldwide, the 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Wire service reports of a flu outbreak in Madrid in the spring of 1918 led to the pandemic being called the " Spanish flu."

By October, hundreds of thousands of Americans died and body storage scarcity hit crisis level. But the flu threat disappeared in the summer of 1919 when most of the infected had either developed immunities or died.
READ MORE: Why October 1918 Was America's Deadliest Month Ever
1957: Asian flu

Starting in Hong Kong and spreading throughout China and then into the United States, the Asian flu became widespread in England where, over six months, 14,000 people died. A second wave followed in early 1958, causing an estimated total of about 1.1 million deaths globally, with 116,000 deaths in the United States alone. A vaccine was developed, effectively containing the pandemic.

1981: HIV/AIDS

First identified in 1981, AIDS destroys a person's immune system, resulting in eventual death by diseases that the body would usually fight off. Those infected by the HIV virus encounter fever, headache, and enlarged lymph nodes upon infection. When symptoms subside, carriers become highly infectious through blood and genital fluid, and the disease destroys t-cells.

AIDS was first observed in American gay communities but is believed to have developed from a chimpanzee virus from West Africa in the 1920s. The disease, which spreads through certain body fluids, moved to Haiti in the 1960s, and then New York and San Francisco in the 1970s.

Treatments have been developed to slow the progress of the disease, but 35 million people worldwide have died of AIDS since its discovery, and a cure is yet to be found.

2003: SARS

First identified in 2003 after several months of cases, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is believed to have possibly started with bats, spread to cats and then to humans in China, followed by 26 other countries, infecting 8,096 people, with 774 deaths.

SARS is characterized by respiratory problems, dry cough, fever and head and body aches and is spread through respiratory droplets from coughs and sneezes.

Quarantine efforts proved effective and by July, the virus was contained and hasn't reappeared since. China was criticized for trying to suppress information about the virus at the beginning of the outbreak.

SARS was seen by global health professionals as a wake-up call to improve outbreak responses, and lessons from the pandemic were used to keep diseases like H1N1, Ebola and Zika under control.

2019: COVID-19

STR/AFP/Getty Images

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 virus was officially a pandemic after barreling through 114 countries in three months and infecting over 118,000 people. And the spread wasn't anywhere near finished.

COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus-a new coronavirus strain that has not been previously found in people. Symptoms include respiratory problems, fever and cough, and can lead to pneumonia and death. Like SARS, it's spread through droplets from sneezes.

The first reported case in China appeared November 17, 2019, in the Hubei Province, but went unrecognized. Eight more cases appeared in December with researchers pointing to an unknown virus.

Many learned about COVID-19 when ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang defied government orders and released safety information to other doctors. The following day, China informed WHO and charged Li with a crime. Li died from COVID-19 just over a month later.

Without a vaccine available, the virus spread beyond Chinese borders and by mid-March, it had spread globally to more than 163 countries. On February 11, the infection was officially christened COVID-19.

SOURCES

Disease and History by Frederick C. Cartwright, published by Sutton Publishing, 2014.

Disease: The Story of Disease and Mankind's Continuing Struggle Against It by Mary Dobson, published by Quercus, 2007.

Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues by Ed, Joseph P. Byrne, published by Greenwood Press, 2008.

Influenza, The American Experience.

Source Book of Medical History, Logan Clendening, published by Dover Publications, 1960.

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In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. When an epidemic spreads beyond a country's borders, that's when the disease officially becomes a pandemic. Communicable diseases existed during humankind's hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities that made epidemics more possible.

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How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine

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How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine

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At the height of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine under Joseph Stalin, starving people roamed the countryside, desperate for something, anything to eat. In the village of Stavyshche, a young peasant boy watched as the wanderers dug into empty gardens with their bare hands. Many were so emaciated, he recalled, that their bodies began to swell and stink from the extreme lack of nutrients.

"You could see them walking about, just walking and walking, and one would drop, and then another, and so on it went," hesaid many years later, in a case history collected in the late 1980s by a Congressional commission. In the cemetery outside the village hospital, overwhelmed doctors carried the bodies on stretchers and tossed them into an enormous pit.

The Holodomor's Death Toll

The Ukrainian famine-known as the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for "starvation" and "to inflict death"-by one estimate claimed the lives of 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population. And, unlike other famines in history caused by blight or drought, this was caused when a dictator wanted both to replace Ukraine's small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.

"The Ukrainian famine was a clear case of a man-made famine," explains Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of the 2018 book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. He describes it as "a hybrid...of a famine caused by calamitous social-economic policies and one aimed at a particular population for repression or punishment."

In those days, Ukraine-a Texas-sized nation along the Black Sea to the west of Russia-was a part of the Soviet Union, then ruled by Stalin. In 1929, as part of his plan to rapidly create a totally communist economy, Stalin had imposed collectivization, which replaced individually owned and operated farms with big state-run collectives. Ukraine's small, mostly subsistence farmers resisted giving up their land and livelihoods.

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Resistant Farmers Labeled as 'Kulaks'

In response, the Soviet regime derided the resisters as kulaks-well-to-do peasants, who in Soviet ideology were considered enemies of the state. Soviet officials drove these peasants off their farms by force and Stalin's secret police further made plans to deport 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia, historian Anne Applebaum writes in her 2017 book, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.

"Stalin appears to have been motivated by the goal of transforming the Ukrainian nation into his idea of a modern, proletarian, socialist nation, even if this entailed the physical destruction of broad sections of its population," says Trevor Erlacher, an historian and author specializing in modern Ukraine and an academic advisor at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies.

Collectivization in Ukraine didn't go very well. By the fall of 1932-around the time that Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva, who reportedly objected to his collectivization policy, committed suicide-it became apparent that Ukraine's grain harvest was going to miss Soviet planners' target by 60 percent. There still might have been enough food for Ukrainian peasants to get by, but, as Applebaum writes, Stalin then ordered what little they had be confiscated as punishment for not meeting quotas.

"The famine of 1932-33 stemmed from later decisions made by the Stalinist government, after it became clear that the 1929 plan had not gone as well as hoped for, causing a food crisis and hunger," explains Stephen Norris, a professor of Russian history at Miami University in Ohio. Norris says a December 1932 document called, "On the Procurement of Grain in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Western Oblast," directed party cadres to extract more grain from regions that had not met their quotas. It further called for the arrest of collective farm chiefs who resisted and of party members who did not fulfill the new quotas.

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Decrees Targeted Ukrainian 'Saboteurs'

Meanwhile, Stalin, according to Applebaum, already had arrested tens of thousands of Ukrainian teachers and intellectuals and removed Ukrainian-language books from schools and libraries. She writes that the Soviet leader used the grain shortfall as an excuse for even more intense anti-Ukrainian repression. As Norris notes, the 1932 decree "targeted Ukrainian 'saboteurs,' ordered local officials to stop using the Ukrainian language in their correspondence, and cracked down on Ukrainian cultural policies that had been developed in the 1920s."

When Stalin's crop collectors went out into the countryside, according to a 1988 U.S. Congressional commission report, they used long wooden poles with metal points to poke the dirt floors of peasants' homes and probe the ground around them, in case they'd buried stores of grain to avoid detection. Peasants accused of being food hoarders typically were sent off to prison, though sometimes the collectors didn't wait to inflict punishment. Two boys who were caught hiding fish and frogs they'd caught, for example, were taken to the village soviet, where they were beaten, and then dragged into a field with their hands tied and mouths and noses gagged, where they were left to suffocate.

As the famine worsened, many tried to flee in search of places with more food. Some died by the roadside, while others were thwarted by the secret police and the regime's system of internal passports. Ukrainian peasants resorted to desperate methods in an effort to stay alive, according to the Congressional commission's report. They killed and ate pets and consumed flowers, leaves, tree bark and roots. One woman who found some dried beans was so hungry that she ate them on the spot without cooking them, and reportedly died when they expanded in her stomach.

"The policies adopted by Stalin and his deputies in response to the famine after it had begun to grip the Ukrainian countryside constitute the most significant evidence that the famine was intentional," Erlacher says. "Local citizens and officials pleaded for relief from the state. Waves of refugees fled the villages in search of food in the cities and beyond the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic." The regime's response, he says, was to take measures that worsened their plight.

By the summer of 1933, some of the collective farms had only a third of their households left, and prisons and labor camps were jammed to capacity. With hardly anyone left to raise crops, Stalin's regime resettled Russian peasants from other parts of the Soviet Union in Ukraine to cope with the labor shortage. Faced with the prospect of an even wider food catastrophe, Stalin's regime in the fall of 1933 started easing off collections.

Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images

Russian Government Denies Famine Was 'Genocide'

The Russian government that replaced the Soviet Union has acknowledged that famine took place in Ukraine, but denied it was genocide. Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." In April 2008, Russia's lower house of Parliament passed a resolution stating that "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines." Nevertheless, at least 16 countries have recognized the Holodomor, and most recently, the U.S. Senate, in a 2018 resolution, affirmed the findings of the 1988 commission that Stalin had committed genocide.

Ultimately, although Stalin's policies resulted in the deaths of millions, it failed to crush Ukrainian aspirations for autonomy, and in the long run, they may actually have backfired. "Famine often achieves a socio-economic or military purpose, such as transferring land possession or clearing an area of population, since most flee rather than die," famine historian de Waal says. "But politically and ideologically it is more often counterproductive for its perpetrators. As in the case of Ukraine it generated so much hatred and resentment that it solidified Ukrainian nationalism."

Eventually, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine finally became an independent nation-and the Holodomor remains a painful part of Ukrainians' common identity.

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How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine

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At the height of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine under Joseph Stalin, starving people roamed the countryside, desperate for something, anything to eat. In the village of Stavyshche, a young peasant boy watched as the wanderers dug into empty gardens with their bare hands.

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Why Black Cats Are Associated With Halloween and Bad Luck

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Why Black Cats Are Associated With Halloween and Bad Luck

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Among superstitions, one of the oldest and most enduring is that crossing paths with a black cat will bring on bad luck. The dark-colored felines have also been folded into modern Halloween symbols, giving them the (unearned) reputation of being spooky.

But how and where did the association between black cats and bad luck begin? Here's what is known about the connection between Halloween and black cats, including the lasting impact of this superstition that remains today.

Origins of Black Cat Superstitions

The connections between humans and cats can be traced back to some of the world's earliest civilizations, most notably, ancient Egypt, where cats were considered divine symbols. Cats also made an appearance in Greek mythology, specifically Hecate, goddess of magic, sorcery, the moon and witchcraft, was described as having a cat as both a pet and a familiar (a supernatural creature that assists a witch, according to European folklore).

Written records link black cats to the occult as far back as the 13th century when an official church document called "Vox in Rama" was issued by Pope Gregory IX on June 13, 1233. "In it, black cats were declared an incarnation of Satan," says Layla Morgan Wilde, author of Black Cats Tell: True Tales And Inspiring Images. "The decree marked the beginning of the inquisition and church-sanctioned heretic and/or witch hunts. Initially it was designed to squash the growing cult of Luciferians in Germany, but quickly spread across Europe."

Cats and Witches Seen as Threats to Early Christian Church

Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

In addition to their early association with Satan, cats also became inextricably linked to witches in medieval Europe. According to Cerridwen Fallingstar, Wiccan priestess and author of Broth from the Cauldron: A Wisdom Journey through Everyday Magic, witches were the pre-Christian pagan practitioners of Europe.

Although the early Christian church in Europe coexisted with witches, as the church gained power, she says that they saw witches as their direct competition in gaining the hearts and minds of the people. That's when the church began hunting, persecuting, torturing and killing witches in vast numbers, she explains.

"Witches honored the natural world, having deep respect for plants and animals," says Fallingstar. "Affection between human and animal therefore began to be seen as 'diabolical', or devilish, and the old lady with her cats became seen as suspect."

But it wasn't only the connection they fabricated between witches, cats, and the devil that the early Christians feared: they also saw them both as threats. "Cats, like the women accused of witchcraft, tend to exhibit a healthy disrespect of authority," she notes. "They don't fawn, like dogs, upon even the unworthy. In the church, neither independent women, nor independent animals, were to be tolerated."

At some point, the pairing of witches with cats narrowed to black cats, although Fallingstar says that it's not entirely clear why that happened. "The relationship between witches and black cats in particular is probably imaginary, but it is possible that black cats make better mousers, since they cannot be seen at night and therefore have a hunting advantage," she explains. "Witches do tend towards the practical."

Eventually, the fear surrounding black cats and their association with witchcraft made its way across the Atlantic, courtesy of Puritan colonists, says Daniel Compora, associate professor of English language and literature at The University of Toledo. "The idea that witches could turn into their familiar likely evolved from those accused of witchcraft having cats as pets," he explains.
READ MORE: Before America Had Witch Trials, Europe Had Werewolf Trials
Cats Blamed for Spreading the Plague

During the Middle Ages, it wasn't uncommon for cats to be killed, given their association with evil, Compora says. Some people even went as far as blaming cats for spreading the Bubonic plague, and used that as another reason to get rid of them. However, their ill-conceived plan backfired.

"In a particularly bizarre piece of irony, the killing of the cats helped fuel the spread of the plague," Compora explains. "With the reduced number of cats to control the rodent population, the disease spread rapidly."

Origins of Black Cat Crossing Your Path Superstition

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Given the belief in medieval Europe that the devil and witches were capable of taking the form of black cats, it makes sense that the superstition surrounding crossing their paths developed, says Phoebe Millerwhite, a folklorist and artist. "Therefore, a black cat crossing your path might very well be on a mission from a witch," she notes. "Just as easily, it could be the devil in disguise-and no one wants to cross paths with the devil. This explains why a black cat crossing your path is considered a bad omen."

This notion continued into the Renaissance, says Fallingstar, when a black cat crossing your path might have indicated that a witch had sent her familiar to do you harm. "Many fearful peasants of the day might have hurried to the nearest church and paid for a priest to bless them and rid them of any curse that might have been laid by the cat," she says. "As this was a source of income for the church, such fears would have likely been encouraged."

But the idea that black cats are bad luck isn't universal, according to Compora. In fact, some cultures believe that black cats bring good luck.

"Their resemblance to the cat-goddess Bastet led them to be honored in ancient Egypt," he explains. "In other countries, such as Scotland and Japan, they have been known to represent prosperity. Apparently, whether a black cat is viewed as a benevolent creature or an evil supernatural force is entirely based on whichever lore one is likely to embrace."

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Why Black Cats Are Associated With Halloween and Bad Luck

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Among superstitions, one of the oldest and most enduring is that crossing paths with a black cat will bring on bad luck. The dark-colored felines have also been folded into modern Halloween symbols, giving them the (unearned) reputation of being spooky. But how and where did the association between black cats and bad luck begin?

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Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired a late 19th-century secret society, an early 20th-century novel, a horror film franchise and not one but two unwieldy terms-paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia-that describe fear of this supposedly unlucky day.

The Fear of 13

Just like walking under a ladder, crossing paths with a black cat or breaking a mirror, many people hold fast to the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. Though it's uncertain exactly when this particular tradition began, negative superstitions have swirled around the number 13 for centuries.

While Western cultures have historically associated the number 12 with completeness (there are 12 days of Christmas, 12 months and zodiac signs, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 gods of Olympus and 12 tribes of Israel, just to name a few examples), its successor 13 has a long history as a sign of bad luck.

The ancient Code of Hammurabi, for example, reportedly omitted a 13th law from its list of legal rules. Though this was probably a clerical error, superstitious people sometimes point to this as proof of 13's longstanding negative associations.

Fear of the number 13 has even earned a psychological term: triskaidekaphobia.
READ MORE: What's So Unlucky About the Number 13?
Why is Friday the 13th Unlucky?

According to biblical tradition, 13 guests attended the Last Supper, held on Maundy Thursday, including Jesus and his 12 apostles (one of whom, Judas, betrayed him). The next day, of course, was Good Friday, the day of Jesus' crucifixion.

The seating arrangement at the Last Supper is believed to have given rise to a longstanding Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table was a bad omen-specifically, that it was courting death.

Though Friday's negative associations are weaker, some have suggested they also have roots in Christian tradition: Just as Jesus was crucified on a Friday, Friday was also said to be the day Eve gave Adam the fateful apple from the Tree of Knowledge, as well as the day Cain killed his brother, Abel.
READ MORE: Why Friday the 13th Spelled Doom for the Knights Templar
The Thirteen Club

In the late-19th century, a New Yorker named Captain William Fowler (1827-1897) sought to remove the enduring stigma surrounding the number 13-and particularly the unwritten rule about not having 13 guests at a dinner table-by founding an exclusive society called the Thirteen Club.

The group dined regularly on the 13th day of the month in room 13 of the Knickerbocker Cottage, a popular watering hole Fowler owned from 1863 to 1883. Before sitting down for a 13-course dinner, members would pass beneath a ladder and a banner reading "Morituri te Salutamus," Latin for "Those of us who are about to die salute you."

Four former U.S. presidents ( Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and Theodore Roosevelt) would join the Thirteen Club's ranks at one time or another.

Friday the 13th in Pop Culture

An important milestone in the history of the Friday the 13th legend in particular (not just the number 13) occurred in 1907, with the publication of the novel Friday, the Thirteenth written by Thomas William Lawson.

The book told the story of a New York City stockbroker who plays on superstitions about the date to create chaos on Wall Street, and make a killing on the market.

The horror movie Friday the 13th, released in 1980, introduced the world to a hockey mask-wearing killer named Jason, and is perhaps the best-known example of the famous superstition in pop culture history. The movie spawned multiple sequels, as well as comic books, novellas, video games, related merchandise and countless terrifying Halloween costumes.
READ MORE: The Real Stories Behind Classic Horror Movies
What Bad Things Happened on Friday 13th?

On Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land.

Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviors (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky.

In more recent times, a number of traumatic events have occurred on Friday the 13th, including the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940); the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964); a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970); the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972); the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996) and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012).

Sources

"The Origins of Unlucky Friday the 13th," Live Science.
"Friday the 13th: why is it unlucky and other facts about the worst day in the calendar," The Telegraph.
"13 Freaky Things That Happened on Friday the 13th," Live Science.
"Here's Why Friday the 13th is Considered Unlucky," Time.
"Friggatriskaidekaphobes Need Not Apply," New-York Historical Society.

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Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired a late 19th-century secret society, an early 20th-century novel, a horror film franchise and not one but two unwieldy terms-paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia-that describe fear of this supposedly unlucky day.

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The Origins of Veterans Day (November 11) in the United States

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The Origins of Veterans Day (November 11) in the United States

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Veterans Day is a U.S. legal holiday dedicated to American veterans of all wars, and Veterans Day 2021 occurs on Thursday, November 11. In 1918, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in World War I, then known as "the Great War."

Commemorated in many countries as Armistice Day the following year, November 11th became a federal holiday in the United States in 1938. In the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, Armistice Day became known as Veterans Day.
READ MORE: Veterans Day History and Stories
Armistice Day

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, marking the official end of World War I. Nonetheless, the armistice date of November 11, 1918, remained in the public imagination as the date that marked the end of the conflict.

One year later, in November 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. The day's observation included parades and public gatherings, as well as a brief pause in business and school activities at 11 a.m.

On November 11, 1921, an unidentified American soldier killed in the war was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. On the same day the previous year, unidentified soldiers were laid to rest at Westminster Abbey in London and at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Did you know? Red poppies, a symbol of World War I from their appearance in the beloved poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, are sold in Canada and the United Kingdom on Remembrance Day to raise money for veterans or worn in the lapel as a tribute.

On June 4, 1926, Congress passed a resolution that the "recurring anniversary of [November 11, 1918] should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations," and that the president should issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of Armistice Day.

By that time, 27 state legislatures had made November 11 a legal holiday. An act approved May 13, 1938 made November 11 a legal Federal holiday, "dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day.'"

In actuality, there are no U.S. national holidays because the states retain the right to designate their own, and the government can only designate holidays for federal employees and for the District of Columbia. In practice, however, states almost always follow the federal lead.

From Armistice Day to Veterans Day

American effort during World War II saw the greatest mobilization of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force in the nation's history (more than 16 million people); some 5.7 million more served in the Korean War.

In 1954, after lobbying efforts by veterans' service organizations, the 83rd U.S. Congress amended the 1938 act that had made Armistice Day a holiday, striking the word "Armistice" in favor of "Veterans." President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the legislation on June 1, 1954. From then on, November 11 became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

The next development in the story of Veterans Day unfolded in 1968, when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which sought to ensure three-day weekends for federal employees-and encourage tourism and travel-by celebrating four national holidays (Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Columbus Day) on Mondays.

The observation of Veterans Day was set as the fourth Monday in October. The first Veterans Day under the new law was Monday, October 25, 1971; confusion ensued, as many states disapproved of this change, and continued to observe the holiday on its original date.

In 1975, after it became evident that the actual date of Veterans Day carried historical and patriotic significance to many Americans, President Gerald Ford signed a new law returning the observation of Veterans Day to November 11th beginning in 1978. If November 11 falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the federal government observes the holiday on the previous Friday or following Monday, respectively. Government offices are closed on Veterans Day.

Remembrance Day

Great Britain, France, Australia and Canada also commemorate the veterans of World War I and II on or near November 11th: Canada has Remembrance Day, while Britain has Remembrance Sunday (the second Sunday of November). In Europe, Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries it is common to observe two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. every November 11.

Veterans Day Traditions

In the United States, an official wreath-laying ceremony is held each Veterans Day at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, while parades and other celebrations are held in states around the country.

Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day-a common misunderstanding, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Memorial Day (the fourth Monday in May) honors American service members who died in service to their country or as a result of injuries incurred during battle, while Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans-living or dead-but especially gives thanks to living veterans who served their country honorably during war or peacetime.
READ MORE: 15 Quotes Honoring US Veterans
Photo Galleries

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Veterans Day is a U.S. legal holiday dedicated to American veterans of all wars, and Veterans Day 2021 occurs on Thursday, November 11. In 1918, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in World War I.

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Contents

1. Origins to a Bloody Pagan Festival

2. Letters Addressed to 'Juliet'

3. Box of Chocolates

4. First Valentine Was Written From a Prison

5. 'Vinegar Valentines' Discouraged Suitors

6. 'Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve'

7. 'Sweethearts' Candies Started Out as Lozenges

8. Cupid Began as a Greek God

9. How 'X' Came to Mean 'Kiss'

Valentine's Day is celebrated every February 14 as couples across the globe honor their spouses, partners and sweethearts. Hundreds of years of traditions and customs have made it into the holiday that we observe today. Here are nine interesting facts about the holiday dedicated to romance and love.
WATCH: 7 Things You Didn't Know About Valentine's Day
Origins to a Bloody Pagan Festival

Some trace Valentine's Day origins to a Christian effort to replace a pagan fertility festival that has been dated as far back as the 6th century B.C. During the festival of Lupercalia, Roman priests would sacrifice goats and dogs and use their blood-soaked hides to slap women on the streets, as a fertility blessing. According to legend, women would later put their names in an urn and be selected to be paired with a man for a year.

Letters Addressed to 'Juliet'

Every year, thousands of romantics send letters addressed to Verona, Italy to "Juliet," the subject of the timeless romantic tragedy, "Romeo and Juliet." The city marks the location of the Shakespearean tale, and the letters that reach the city are dutifully answered by a team of volunteers from the Juliet Club. Each year, on Valentine's Day, the club awards the "Cara Giulietta" ("Dear Juliet") prize to the author of the most touching love letter.
READ MORE: Famous Quotes About Love for Valentine's Day
Box of Chocolates

The Valentine's Day tradition of giving a box of candy was started in the 19th century by Richard Cadbury, a scion of a British chocolate manufacturing family. With a new technique recently established at the company to create more varieties of chocolate, Cadbury pounced on the opportunity to sell the chocolates as part of the beloved holiday.
READ MORE: How Chocolate Became a Valentine's Day Staple
First Valentine Was Written From a Prison

History's first valentine was written in perhaps one of the most unromantic places conceivable: a prison. Charles, Duke of Orleans wrote the love letter to his second wife at the age of 21 while captured at the Battle of Agincourt. As a prisoner for more than 20 years, he would never see his valentine's reaction to the poem he penned to her in the early 15th century.
READ MORE: Oldest Known Valentine Was Written in Prison
'Vinegar Valentines' Discouraged Suitors

During the Victoria Era, those who didn't want the attention of certain suitors would anonymously send "vinegar valentines." These cards, also called penny dreadfuls, were the antithesis of customary valentines, comically insulting and rejecting unwanted admirers. They were later used to target suffragettes in the late 19th and early 20th century.
READ MORE: Victorian-Era 'Vinegar' Valentines Could Be Mean and Hostile
'Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve'

The term "wearing your heart on your sleeve" may have origins in picking a valentine. Smithsonian reports that during the Middle Ages, men would draw the names of women who they would be coupled with for the upcoming year while attending a Roman festival honoring Juno. After choosing, the men wore the names on their sleeves to show their bond during the festivities.

'Sweethearts' Candies Started Out as Lozenges

The iconic chalky heart-shaped candies that have been passed out lovingly every Valentine's Day started out as lozenges. According to the Food Business News, pharmacist and inventor Oliver Chase created a machine that would quickly create the lozenges before switching to using the machine to create candy-later known as Necco Wafers.

Chase's brother came up with the idea to print messages on the candy in 1866, and the candies got their heart shape in 1901, appealing specifically to Valentine's Day sweethearts.

Cupid Began as a Greek God

The chubby baby with wings and a bow and arrow that we call Cupid has been associated with Valentine's Day for centuries. However, before he was renamed Cupid, he was known to the ancient Greeks as Eros, the god of love. Eros, the son of Greek goddess Aphrodite, would use two sets of arrows-one for love and another for hate-to play with the emotions of his targets. It wasn't until stories of his mischief were told by Romans that he adopted the childlike appearance that we recognize today.
READ MORE: Who Is Cupid?
How 'X' Came to Mean 'Kiss'

The idea of using a kiss to sign off on valentines also has a long history, according to the Washington Post. The use of "X" came to represent Christianity, or the cross, in the Middle Ages. During the same time, the symbol was used to sign off on documents. After marking with an X, the writer would often kiss the mark as a sign of their oath. As the gesture grew among kings and commoners to certify books, letters and paperwork, these records were described as having been "sealed with a kiss."
READ MORE: 8 Momentous Kisses in History

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Origins to a Bloody Pagan Festival Letters Addressed to 'Juliet' Box of Chocolates First Valentine Was Written From a Prison 'Vinegar Valentines' Discouraged Suitors 'Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve' 'Sweethearts' Candies Started Out as Lozenges Cupid Began as a Greek God How 'X' Came to Mean 'Kiss' Valentine's Day is celebrated every February 14 as couples across the globe honor their spouses, partners and sweethearts.

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Discover what happened on November 27 with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.