Political Leaders

Michael Peña portrays farmworker turned activist Cesar Chavez in a new biopic.

What the New Cesar Chavez Film Gets Wrong About the Labor Activist

Despite the good intentions, the biopic misleads and distorts his role in the farm workers movement

Mine!

Seventy Five Years Ago, the Bronx Tried to Take Over Part of Manhattan With Just a Limo And a Flag

James F. Lyons drove over to Marble Hill and planted his flag, claiming it as his. It didn't work.

Portrait of a young revolutionary: Friedrich Engels at age 21, in 1842, the year he moved to Manchester–and the year before he met Mary Burns.

How Friedrich Engels’ Radical Lover Helped Him Father Socialism

Mary Burns exposed the capitalist's son to the plight of the working people of Manchester

Alexander Hamilton, painted by John Trumbull, c. 1806

Alexander Hamilton’s Adultery and Apology

Revelations about the treasury secretary's sex life forced him to choose between candor and his career.

Before the blows began to rain: Walter Reuther (hand in pocket) and Richard Frankensteen (to Reuther’s left).

How the Ford Motor Company Won a Battle and Lost Ground

Corporate violence against union organizers might have gone unrecorded—if it not for an enterprising news photographer

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When New York City Tamed the Feared Gunslinger Bat Masterson

The lawman had a reputation to protect—but that reputation shifted after he moved East

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The Most Audacious Australian Prison Break of 1876

An American whaling ship brought together an oddball crew with a dangerous mission: freeing six Irishmen from a jail in western Australia

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The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor

Vivian Gordon was a reputed prostitute and blackmailer—but her murder led to the downfall of New York Mayor Jimmy Walker

Justice Robert Jackson, Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1942.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper

Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper credited with 309 kills—and an advocate for women's rights. On a U.S. tour in 1942, she found a friend in the first lady

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War and Peace of Mind for Ulysses S. Grant

With the help of his friend Mark Twain, Grant finished his memoirs—and saved his wife from an impoverished widowhood—just days before he died

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The Candor and Lies of Nazi Officer Albert Speer

The minister of armaments was happy to tell his captors about the war machine he had built. But it was a different story when he was asked about the Holocaust

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The History of the Teddy Bear: From Wet and Angry to Soft and Cuddly

After Teddy Roosevelt's act of sportsmanship in 1902 was made legendary by a political cartoonist, his name was forever affixed to an American classic

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The Day Henry Clay Refused to Compromise

The Great Pacificator was adept at getting congressmen to reach agreements over slavery. But he was less accommodating when one of his own slaves sued him

A likeness of Madame Restell, published in the National Police Gazette, 1847

Madame Restell: The Abortionist of Fifth Avenue

Without benefit of medical training, Madame Restell spent 40 years as a "female physician"

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The History of Pardoning Turkeys Began With Tad Lincoln

The rambunctious boy had free rein of the White House, and used it to divert a holiday bird from the butcher's block

Geronimo as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1898

Geronimo’s Appeal to Theodore Roosevelt

Held captive far longer than his surrender agreement called for, the Apache warrior made his case directly to the president

President Gerald Ford in April 1975 with Dick Cheney (left), who would become the youngest White House chief of staff in history, and Donald Rumsfeld, who would become defense secretary.

A Halloween Massacre at the White House

In the fall of 1975 President Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts and a car accident. Then his life got really complicated

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The Traumatic Birth of the Modern (and Vicious) Political Campaign

When Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California in 1934, new media were marshaled to beat him

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The Silence that Preceded China’s Great Leap into Famine

Mao Zedong encouraged critics of his government—and then betrayed them just when their advice might have prevented a calamity

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The Copper King’s Precipitous Fall

Augustus Heinze dominated the copper fields of Montana, but his family's scheming on Wall Street set off the Panic of 1907

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