USA

Roger Hudson takes a hilltop view of a smouldering city, following the devastating earthquake of April 18th, 1906.

Alarm about moral degeneracy and ‘family values’ provoked Hollywood to instigate its own self-censorship codes in the 1920s. But much more than prudery underpinned their lasting impact, says Tim Stanley.

On the Restoration, Charles II pardoned the many supporters of Cromwell’s Protectorate, with the exception of those directly involved in the execution of his father. These men now found their lives to be at great risk and several fled the country, as Charles Spencer explains.

Graeme Garrard describes the events that led to the torching of the new US capital by British troops in August 1814 and considers the impact of the ‘greatest disgrace ever dealt to American arms’ on the US, Britain and Canada.

The notorious prison was closed for good on March 21st, 1963.

In 1961, rattled by Soviet advances in space, President John F. Kennedy declared that, within a decade, the United States would land a man on the Moon. David Baker tells the story of how it took the US Air Force to change NASA and make the dream a reality.

Roger Hudson tells the story behind a gathering of glamorous movie stars in Washington DC in October 1947.

President Obama has more in common with Dwight D. Eisenhower than any other of his predecessors, says Michael Burleigh.

Who is and who is not an American? The question goes back to the Revolution. The answer is always changing, says Tim Stanley.

The investigation of President Kennedy’s murder was marked by serious blunders. As a result, the truth behind the assassination is unlikely to be known, says Peter Ling.

The great Confederate commander was fatally wounded at Chancellorsville on May 2nd, 1863.

The celebrated little person was married on February 10th, 1863.

Peter Mandler explains how the anthropologist Margaret Mead, author of best-selling studies of ‘primitive’ peoples, became a major influence on US military thinking during the Second World War.

Of the many immigrants from the United Kingdom who took up arms in the war, only a small number were English. Daniel Clarke explores the experiences of those who served.

The 19th-century view from Albion of the shortcomings of the US Constitution was remarkably astute, says Frank Prochaska.

The designer of the Colt revolver, the most celebrated killing machine in the history of the Wild West, died on January 10th 1862, aged 47.

The boxer's great victory over James J. Braddock took place on June 22nd, 1937.

John Herschel Glenn Jr was the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th 1962.

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon, which is a problem for some voters. But, says Andrew Preston, so was the Catholicism of John F. Kennedy and it did not stop him winning the 1960 election.

In the summer of 1941 a collection of paintings by serving members of the London Fire Brigade  was exhibited in the United States. Anthony Kelly describes the success of a little-known propaganda campaign celebrating Britain’s ‘spirit of civilian heroism’.

Since the 1980s the American family has evolved towards greater diversity and complexity. Yet, paradoxically, it is the essentially conservative nuclear family forged in the 1950s that continues to hold sway as a touchstone in US politics and culture, says Tim Stanley.

Barack Obama’s admiration for the progressive Republicanism of Theodore Roosevelt ignores the true nature of both early 20th-century America and the president who embodied it, argues Tim Stanley.

Roger Hudson on the vitriolic reaction to Paul Robeson's open-air concert in Peekskill, New York, 1949.

Graeme Garrard recalls Isaac Brock, the Guernsey-born army officer still celebrated in Canada for his part in defending British North America from the United States in the War of 1812.

Two hundred years ago Britain and the United States went to war. The conflict was a relatively minor affair, but its consequences were great, says Jeremy Black.

Roger Hudson explains the story behind a 19th-century photograph of George Washington's mausoleum.

Greg Carleton explains how disastrous defeats for the Soviet Union and the US in 1941 were transformed into positive national narratives by the two emerging superpowers.

Richard Cavendish charts the life of the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was born on June 14th, 1811.