Hourly History

In 1874, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led a US Army expedition into the Black Hills of South Dakota, which was at that time under the control of the Lakota people. To the expedition members, this was unknown territory on the leading edge of the American frontier.

Discover the remarkable history of the Navajo...

In the early 1800s, the five civilized tribes - the Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Choctaw - were living in lands allocated to them by the United States government in present-day Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee....

During the bitter winter of 1692/93, a group of young Puritan women in the colonial town of Salem, Massachusetts, accused more than 200 of their neighbors and fellow townspeople of using witchcraft to injure and torment them....

Nikola Tesla was a major figure in the world in which he lived. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, it was Tesla who would contribute to some of the world's most amazing inventions....

It is a verifiable fact that the Apostle Paul was one of the most prolific writers of the New Testament, making him one of the founders of the Christian religion that we know today....

The Akkadian Empire was one of the first empires in human history and certainly the first to involve the central government of a large, multi-ethnic populace. It also introduced things like the very first postal system and facilitated advances in science, art, and medicine....

Violent confrontation between armed groups over the supply of illegal narcotics is something we commonly associate with criminal gangs in modern cities, but in the mid-nineteenth century Great Britain went to war with Imperial China....

This is the story of the gradual rise, sudden destruction, and slow recovery of the native people of North America....

The Great Depression was one of the most trying eras in American history. All aspects of the US were affected. After the stock market crash of 1929, the nation was thrust into a decade of turmoil and change - in government, the economy, and culture....

What would become the Russian Empire began in the ninth century. In 1682, a new tsar took over the nation that had become known as Russia. Peter I, remembered as Peter the Great, transformed the country, and in 1721, he adopted the title of emperor....

Barbed wire, trenches, and machine guns are all elements of modern warfare that are mainly associated with the bloody carnage of World War One, yet they were all first used in combination 10 years earlier in a largely forgotten war that was fought in Manchuria and Korea....

The Byzantines were more than just a remnant of Roman glory. At its geographical peak, the Byzantine Empire stretched out across the Mediterranean world....

While names like Nero, Caligula, Hadrian, and Constantine grab all the attention, Marcus Aurelius tends to sit more in the historical background of the Roman Empire. Marcus, a prolific writer and formidable scholar, was perhaps the first to fulfill Plato’s dream of the philosopher king....

Creativity is in our bones. It is found in our very DNA, something not known to Leonardo da Vinci or anyone else who lived in his day and time. All he did was to uncover the hidden genius which lay within himself....

The Spanish Empire was the first truly global empire and the first to be described as one on which “the sun never sets.” It rapidly grew to become one of the largest and most powerful empires in the history of the world and brought us goods such as potatoes, chocolate....

The Hittites lived among gods and kings and captivated the mysterious Sir Lawrence of Arabia, among many eager minds. Who were they? Simply warlike conquerors on a mission to impose Hittite power on the world? How did they become part of the elite highly-exclusive club of kings as great as Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian empires of the second millennium BCE....

Explore the life of one of the medieval world’s most memorable figures. Eleanor of Aquitaine became the queen of both France and England, the wife of two kings, and later the mother of two kings.

The Apache became one of the best-known of all Native American peoples because they were astonishingly capable guerilla fighters.

George Washington, the first president of the United States, is much more than a monument on Mount Rushmore. Who was Washington, the general, president, and husband? Find out....