History

The first debt ceiling fight was in 1953. It looked almost exactly like the one today
Debt ceiling dramas have been going on a long time. The first one happened exactly 70 years ago. President Eisenhower asked Congress for an extra $15 billion and the Senate said, "No dice."
Inequality even in death: Mankato project finds racial covenants in a cemetery and beyond
A Mankato project found racial covenants in seven neighborhoods and a cemetery. The city council recently voted to condemn racial covenants and now is pursuing the discharge of discriminatory language from property deeds.
With new name in Dakota, St. Paul nonprofit pushes Indigenous renaming forward
Lower Phalen Creek Project is now Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi. The new name means “those who care for Wakaŋ Tipi” in Dakota, referencing a cave currently known as Carver’s Cave but ancestrally called Wakan Tipi. 
New biography of Martin Luther King Jr. undercuts a widely cited quote about Malcolm X
A critical quote about Malcolm X that has been attributed to King has been taught for decades. But King didn't say the words that appeared in an article by Alex Haley, says biographer Jonathan Eig.
Biden is going to Hiroshima at a moment when nuclear tensions are on the rise
President Joe Biden will be the second sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the site of the first atomic attack. He is going there for a meeting with G-7 leaders.
Auschwitz museum begins emotional work of conserving 8,000 shoes of murdered children
A two-year effort is underway to preserve 8,000 children's shoes at the former concentration and extermination camp where German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II.
Remembering America's first social network: the landline telephone
Young tech nerds in Seattle are trying to preserve the mysterious machines — many of them almost lost forever — that made America's landline telephone system work before the age of computers.
Carolyn Bryant Donham, who accused Emmett Till before he was lynched, dies at age 88
The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 has died in hospice care in Louisiana, a coroner's report shows.