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Remembering Heart Mountain
November 04, 2025

Explore what life was like at Wyoming’s Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site in 1942 through the memories of Sam Mihara.

Sam Mihara, a surviving incarceree of the Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site (as of 2025) | Courtesy Mihara Family Collection
Blog
Before Lewis and Clark, there was Moncacht-Apé
August 19, 2025

Around the late 1600s, Moncacht-Apé, a Native American explorer, allegedly crossed the continent a century before the famous Lewis and Clark.

Bicyclists on New York's Erie Canalway Trail | Photo courtesy Hudson River Valley Greenway
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Revisiting John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
March 07, 2025

John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry began on Sunday, Oct. 16, 1859, when a band of 22 armed men slipped out of a Maryland farmhouse.

The fire engine house used by John Brown and some of his men in the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 | Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC­DIG-ppmsca-40573 (digital file from original item)
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First in Class: Washington Trailblazer Clara McCarty Wilt Was UW’s First Graduate
March 04, 2024

The first graduate from UW was the trailblazing Clara McCarty Wilt, who would also go become the first woman elected to public office in WA.

Clara McCarty Wilt and YWCA friends, likely in the 1920s | Photo courtesy University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections (POR2339)
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Awaiting Takeoff: The Wright Brothers’ Biking Legacy
December 04, 2023

On a gray North Carolina beach, 120 years ago this December, Wright Brothers completed the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft.

Wilbur Wright working in the Wright brothers’ Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop in 1897
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Remembering the Chinese Forerunners Who Built the Northern Pacific
May 05, 2023

On Aug. 22, 1883, the final tracks of the Northern Pacific Railway were laid when a Chinese crew from the West met an Eastern crew of mostly Irish and Slavic workers near Inde­pendence Creek, Montana.

A Chinese railroad worker on the developing Northern Pacific line in 1905 | Photo courtesy University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Blog
A Path Toward Healing
June 03, 2022

The events of Fort Robinson, while seminal in the Northern Cheyenne’s quest for freedom and autonomy, were not a well-known history.

Northern Cheyenne Monument | Photo courtesy Northern Cheyenne Journey Home Committee
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A Walk to Remember: Indiana’s Place as the Crucible of American Music
February 01, 2022

America’s greatest contribution to cultural history is its music, and it’s been influenced directly by the records made by those artists of Gennett records.

Considered icons of the New Orleans jazz sound, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band recorded their debut album in 1923 at Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana. | Courtesty Charlie Dahan
Blog
Taters and Trains: The Great Big Baked Potato and the Northern Pacific Line
November 10, 2021

In 1908 Hazen Titus was the new superintendent of dining cars for the now-defunct Northern Pacific Line when he overheard a conversation.

Sheet music image | Courtesy University of Colorado, Music Library
Blog
The Legacy of White Buffalo Girl, and the Resiliency of a People
June 04, 2021

In Laurel Hill Cemetery just outside the town of Neligh, Nebraska, stands a gravestone. Here lies White Buffalo Girl.

Volunteers participate in a sacred corn planting in 2019, sowing the seeds by hand. | Photo by Alex Matzke, courtesy Bold Nebraska