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History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup Top 10!

These women were denied veteran status for decades. Congress can’t overlook them again.

by Elizabeth Cobbs

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) now propose to honor the women of the Signal Corps with the Congressional Gold Medal. 

The Rise of the Pedantic Professor

by Sam Fallon

When academic self-regard becomes an intellectual style.

The toxic legacy of the Korean War

by Mary L. Dudziak

The conflict upended the constitutional balance. It has been cited by presidents ever since.

Women in Ancient Rome Didn’t Have Equal Rights. They Still Changed History

by Barry Strauss

If we look hard at the history, we discover some women who made their mark, either working within their prescribed gender roles as wives, lovers, mothers, sisters or daughters, or exercising so much political, religious or, even in a few cases, military power that they smashed those roles altogether and struck out on their own. 

The History of Sexism in the Southern Baptist Church

by Susan M. Shaw

Recent media reports have revealed decades of abuse by Southern Baptist pastors. Here is the history behind the reports.

Barack Obama’s Presidential Library Is Making a Mockery of Transparency

by Anthony Clark

The leader of the “most transparent administration in history” has been anything but transparent when it comes to plans for his presidential center.

Grant’s First Tomb

by Jamelle Bouie

Ulysses S. Grant, inaugurated as president 150 years ago today, missed a chance to reconstruct the South economically as well as politically.

The Island That Changed History

by Sergey Radchenko

A 1969 border clash between Moscow and Beijing pushed the two apart, and opened the door for Nixon to go to China.

Policing black Americans is a long-standing, and ugly, American tradition

by Vanessa Holden and Edward E. Baptist

A new database of all the fugitive slave ads from U.S. and colonial history reveal how white Americans trained and incentivized themselves to police black Americans’ movements.

Michael Cohen’s testimony exposed a direct parallel between Trump and Watergate

by Shane O'Sullivan

Payoffs kept Watergate hidden, but eventually whistleblowers like Cohen flipped.

Five Reasons Why Republicans Won’t Abandon Trump Like They Ditched Nixon

by Ed Kilgore

There are five reasons a broader Republican backlash like the one that helped push Nixon out of office won’t happen if Mueller’s suggestions of law-breaking are limited to obstruction of justice.