Confederate President Jefferson Davis names Judah Benjamin the secretary of war. A Sephardic Jew from South Carolina, Judah Benjamin was an exception to the rule in the Protestant South. As a young man, he moved to New Orleans and lived in a largely...

A Senate committee issues a report charging that U.S. government officials were behind assassination plots against two foreign leaders and were heavily involved in at least three other plots. The shocking revelations suggested that the United States...

On this day, Howard E. Coffin, who founded the Hudson Motor Company along with Joseph L. Hudson in 1909, died from an accidental gunshot wound at Sea Island Beach in Georgia at the age of 64. Coffin served as vice president and chief engineer of...

In what proved a fateful decision on this day in 1776, Continental Commander in Chief General George Washington writes to General Charles Lee in Westchester County, New York, to report the loss of Fort Lee, New Jersey, and to order Lee to bring his...

National Security Council staff memberOliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, begin shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the...