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The Civil Rights Movement: The Struggle for Equality

The Civil Rights movement was an organized movement led by black Americans that occurred after World War Two until the late 1960s to end legal discrimination based on race. The movement saw non-violent protests challenge discrimination in the political arenas but also...

The Civil Rights Movement: The Surge Forward (1954-1960)

The Civil Rights movement coalesced in the 1950s and turned into a protest movement with clear goals, a well-structured leadership, and mobilized activists. Its greatest challenges came in this period, but it made possible the ground-shifting legal changes of the...

19th-Century American Radicals: Vegans, Abolitionists, and Free Love Advocates

On July 4, 1826, as Americans lit firecrackers to celebrate the country’s fiftieth birthday, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were on their deathbeds. They would leave behind a groundbreaking political system and a growing economy—as well as the glaring...

Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, and Other Historical Villains—When is Someone Misunderstood vs. Truly Bad?

Do historical “villains” like Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, and Emperor Caligula deserve their terrible reputations, or are they victims of biased accounts? In this rebroadcast of a live event in the History Unplugged Facebook Page, Scott gets into what makes...

Battle of Princeton: January 3, 1777

The Battle of Princeton was a battle of the American Revolutionary War, fought near Princeton, New Jersey on January 3, 1777. It ended in a small victory for the Colonials. General Lord Cornwallis had left 1,400 British troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel...

Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World

In 2017, over 47,000 Americans died as the result of opioid overdoses, more than died annually in this country during the peak of the AIDs epidemic, and more than die every year from breast cancer. But despite the unprecedented efforts of regulators, activists,...

Hollywood Hates History, Part 4—The Green Berets (1968)

John Wayne was 62 years old when he tried to portray a fit Vietnam War Green Beret colonel, but the obvious age gap isn’t the only head scratcher in this film. Released in 1968, the film was Lyndon B. Johnson-approved attempt to shift American opinion on the...

The Renaissance: Myths and Facts

The Renaissance is a widely misunderstood period in European history; art and culture was reformed but the past was not wholly discarded. Below is an account from a book by Anthony Esolen on this time period. The frequency of assassination, the perennial plots, the...

Spies in the Ancient World, Part 2: On His Roman Emperor’s Secret Service

In this episode we are looking at ancient Greek cryptography and the Roman frumentarii, a group of wheat sellers who turned into the empire’s premier intelligence outfit in the second century. In the fourth century BC, Aeneas Tacticus wrote “How to Survive Under...

Kangaroo Squadron: The Tip of the American Spear in the WW2 Pacific Theatre

In early 1942, while most of the American military was in disarray from the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, a single USAAF squadron advanced to the far side of the world to face America’s new enemy. Based in Australia with poor supplies...