The United States government promoted a strident nationalism during World War I, demanding from its citizens “100 percent Americanism.” Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks launched a propaganda campaign against the Western world. Against this backdrop, two events in early 1919 paved the way for the “Red Scare” in America: the establishment of the Workers’ Party (predecessor to the Communist Party) in the United States, and the appointment of the politically ambitious A. Mitchell Palmer as Attorney General.

That fall, Palmer launched an unprecedented series of raids against suspected political dissidents and left-wing radicals. The “Palmer raids” often were enormous in scope. On December 22, 1919, the United States deported 249 aliens (including well-known anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman) to Russia under suspicion of subversive activities. The Department of Justice conducted raids in 33 cities on January 2, 1920, taking 2,700 people into custody. By the time that the Palmer raids ended in May 1920, they had led to more than 6,000 arrests and 500 deportations.

Palmer justified the raids by claiming that there was a conspiracy to overthrow the government, and pointed to a series of failed bombings as evidence. His disregard of civil liberties, however, drew broad criticism and he ultimately was discredited. Palmer ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1920, but was unsuccessful.

PostScript: As special assistant to the Attorney General, J. Edgar Hoover helped investigate 60,000 radicals in preparation for the Palmer raids. In 1924, Hoover was named Director of the Bureau of Investigation, a position that he held until 1972.

At the outset of World War I, Britain gained an advantage over Germany by controlling the waters around Europe. The British navy blockaded the flow of supplies to German ports, while Britain freely moved its own troops and supplies across the water to its ally, France. Germany determined to counteract Britain’s sea power with its submarines, or U-boats, and in early 1915 warned that no vessel around the British Isles would be safe.

On May 2, 1915, the British passenger ship Lusitania left New York, bound for Liverpool. Five days later, the German sub U-20 torpedoed the liner as it approached the coast of Ireland. The ship listed heavily and sank within 20 minutes. In total, 1,198 of the nearly 2,000 passengers and crew aboard the Lusitania perished. The fatalities included 128 Americans.

While the United States had proclaimed its neutrality when World War I began, “Remember the Lusitania” became a rallying cry for American involvement. President Woodrow Wilson condemned German submarine warfare, but the U.S. remained neutral. Germany later suspended its U-boat campaign to appease the U.S., but then restarted it, believing that its submarines could force Britain to surrender before America would be ready to fight. The U.S. finally declared war on Germany in April 1917.

PostScript: In justifying its attack, Germany claimed that the Lusitania was armed and held war supplies. Though the British government denied the charge, stating that the liner carried only a limited amount of rifle ammunition, later research indicated that the Lusitania was transporting nearly 175 tons of munitions.

In an attempt to build permanent trading posts for England in the Americas, Sir Walter Raleigh initiated explorations of the islands off present-day North Carolina. Ordered by Raleigh to establish a British colony, John White landed with 117 settlers at Roanoke Island on July 22, 1587. Their number grew by one when, on August 18, 1587, White’s daughter gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World.

After 34 days on the island, White sailed to England for supplies. England’s war with Spain long delayed his return to the colony. When White again landed at Roanoke Island in 1590, the colony had disappeared. The word “Croatoan” was written on one tree, and “CRO” on another, apparent references to an Indian tribe living on a nearby island. Efforts to find the settlers, which ended with a search expedition launched by Raleigh in 1602, proved futile.

It is as likely that the lost settlers moved and intermingled with Indian tribes as it is that they were massacred. The Lumbee Indians of southeastern North Carolina believe that they are descendants of members of the Lost Colony and nearby tribes. Some historians posit that the colonists moved to Chesapeake Bay – the site that Raleigh originally had hoped to colonize – only to die there in Indian attacks.

PostScript: A permanent English settlement was not established until 1607, in Jamestown. The disappearance of the Lost Colony is depicted every summer in a pageant on Roanoke Island.

In 1880, Johnse Hatfield, who lived on one side of a border stream in Logan County, West Virginia, courted Roseanna McCoy, who lived on the opposite side in Pike County, Kentucky. Hatfield and McCoy were members of large, tightly knit clans that had been in conflict since the Civil War, when Southern-sympathizing Hatfields killed a McCoy who had fought for the Union. The tension intensified in 1878, when a McCoy accused a Hatfield of stealing one of his hogs.

Two years after Johnse’s romance with Roseanna, the Appalachian mountaineer families suffered major bloodshed. Three McCoy brothers, arrested for killing a Hatfield, were abducted on their way to jail and subsequently murdered by a posse of Hatfields. The feud erupted into brutal, armed warfare that became front-page news nationwide.

Police action proved ineffective against the violence. Because of local support and influence, Hatfields and McCoys arrested in their respective counties routinely were released. Then, in 1888, following a climactic attack on the home of the McCoy patriarch, Pike County authorities invaded West Virginia and seized nine Hatfields for trial in Kentucky. West Virginia complained to the federal courts, but the United States Supreme Court ultimately allowed Kentucky to proceed. All nine McCoys were found guilty, and one was hanged.

PostScript: By the 1920s, the Hatfields and the McCoys had ceased fighting. Their feud still is legendary, and Johnse and Roseanna have been likened to the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet. In June 2000, descendants of the clans for the first time held a joint reunion in Pikeville, Kentucky.

In his 1857 inaugural address, President-elect James Buchanan predicted that the Supreme Court would “speedily and finally” resolve the slavery debate threatening to divide the Union. Two days later, the Court decided Scott v. Sandford. Although Buchanan hoped that the ruling would bring resolution, the Dred Scott case instead served as a catalyst for the Civil War.

Dred Scott, slave to John Emerson, an Army surgeon, began a legal odyssey for his freedom in 1846, three years after Emerson’s death. Although Scott and Emerson lived in Missouri – a slave state – when Emerson died, Scott argued that he was a free man because he and Emerson previously had lived in free territory. The administrator of Emerson's estate, John Sanford (whose name is misspelled in court records) opposed Scott’s claim.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, speaking for a 7-to-2 majority, held that the United States Constitution did not grant blacks any rights of citizenship and that Scott therefore could not bring suit in federal court. That issue alone could have decided the case, but Taney proceeded to assert that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories and that any such attempt violated a slaveholder’s property rights in his slave. Viewed as a major victory for the slaveholding South, the Dred Scott decision fueled Northern antislavery agitation. Four years later, the increasing tension over slavery ignited the war between the States.

PostScript: Scott was sold, freed by his new owner, and reunited with his family within two months following the Supreme Court decision. He died two years later.

In 1896, the Supreme Court held that a railway law segregating the races into separate cars or trains was permissible as long as equal accommodations were provided, stating that this practice did not stamp African-Americans with “a badge of inferiority.” The Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson subsequently was used to uphold segregation in other aspects of public life. Not until 1954 and Brown v. Board did the Court confront the constitutionality of its “separate but equal” doctrine.

Brown v. Board arose when a Topeka elementary school denied admission to the daughter of an African-American railroad worker. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that segregation made African-American school children feel inferior “in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” The Court held that, because a student who felt inferior would have difficulty learning, separate schools “are inherently unequal.” School segregation therefore violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which requires the equal treatment of all citizens.

Although Brown v. Board failed to bring about immediate school integration, its principle formed the basis for federal laws desegregating other public facilities and helped pave the way for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

PostScript: Warren was the Republican Party’s candidate for Vice President on the unsuccessful 1948 ticket headed by Thomas Dewey. Thurgood Marshall, who argued the Brown case as counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, joined Warren in 1967, thus becoming the first African-American elevated to Supreme Court Justice.

On the heels of a stunning victory in Chancellorsville, Virginia, Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee desired a major triumph in Northern territory. He invaded with 75,000 troops and, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, met General George G. Meade’s 85,000-strong Union Army of the Potomac. The resulting conflict, taking place between July 1 and 3, 1863, was the turning point of the Civil War and the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.

The shooting began when a Confederate brigade, looking in Gettysburg for needed footwear, came upon Northern cavalry. That first day, Confederate troops drove the Union Army through town but failed to capture high ground to the south, where the Union assumed a strong defensive position. On the second day, Lee initiated assaults on the flanks of the Union line, but the North held its position. Lee next ordered an attack on the center of the column. Led by Major General George E. Pickett, 15,000 Confederate soldiers marched across a half-mile of open field toward 10,000 Union troops firing from atop Cemetery Ridge; only a few Confederate troops ascended the ridge as “Pickett’s Charge” was repulsed. The South retreated on the Fourth of July.

After the defeat at Gettysburg, Lee lamented, “It’s all my fault.” He offered his resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who refused it. Its manpower nearly exhausted, the South would fight hopelessly for two more years.

PostScript: More than 50,000 troops died during the three-day battle. In November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address honored the “brave men … who struggled here” at the dedication of the National Cemetery at the site.

When Francisco Pizarro led 167 Spaniards in a conquest of the Inca state in 1532, the city of “Machu Picchu,” resting on a narrow ridge between two sharp peaks in a densely vegetated area of the Andes mountains, escaped detection. The rich, five-square-mile city, located 50 miles outside of the Inca capital of Cusco, Peru, would remain hidden in its high perch (nearly 8,000 feet above sea level) for 379 years.

It is believed that Machu Picchu was built sometime after 1438, a period of Inca expansion that witnessed the defeat of rival tribes in the region, and that the Incas abandoned the city shortly after the Spanish conquest. Unable to determine the Inca name for the city, researchers named it Machu Picchu (“old peak”) after the older mountain peak. Scholars also do not know the function of the city; containing temples, sacred plazas, garden terraces, and residences, it may have served as a fortress or as a retreat for the Inca royal family. Skilled as engineers, the Incas constructed a stone-paved road through forbidding terrain to connect Machu Picchu with Cusco.

Because the Incas did not develop a writing system, scholars have relied upon archaeological remains to learn about their civilization. In 1911, Hiram Bingham of Yale University discovered Machu Picchu nearly intact. One of only a few pre-Columbian urban centers found so well preserved, Machu Picchu is Peru’s leading tourist attraction.

PostScript: Though the Spanish invaders tried to eradicate the Inca empire, its customs have been preserved by the six million Quechua-speaking Indians remaining in the Peruvian highlands.

In the third century B.C., the first emperor of a united China, Shih Huang Ti of the Ch’in dynasty, conceived a plan to defend against invasions by nomadic tribes to the north. The plan was to create a single defensive wall by connecting the various walls erected by formerly independent kingdoms. The result was the Great Wall of China, the longest defensive structure ever built.

Although the wall often failed to keep invaders out, it nonetheless proved to be a valuable defense system. First, it contained a network of watchtowers, several stories in height, that transmitted word of enemy movements by smoke or fire signals. Second, the top of the wall was as much as 35 feet wide and acted as a highway that facilitated the transport of troops and equipment in response to those signals.

Following extensions made in other periods, particularly by the Ming dynasty in the late 1400s, the Great Wall now stretches for approximately 4,000 miles, winding like a dragon over mountains and along desert borders. Much of the Great Wall was destroyed when, beginning in the 1960s, China’s communist government led a 20-year attack against the nation’s cultural traditions. In 1984, Deng Xiaoping began a new campaign to “love our country and restore our Great Wall.” It now stands as an unofficial national symbol.

PostScript: The Great Wall was built by forced laborers, using only their hands. Legend has it that the bodies of deceased workers were among the building materials used to erect the structure. Accordingly, the wall has been called the longest cemetery in the world.

On June 11, 1770, Captain James Cook ran his ship aground on a coral reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. The reef was one of thousands of coral reefs that extended in a broken chain – more than 1,250 miles in length – along the northeastern Australian coast. Cook had discovered the Great Barrier Reef, the largest group of coral reefs in the world and the largest structure ever formed from living creatures.

Known for its vibrant beauty, the Great Barrier Reef lies offshore at distances ranging from 10 miles to more than 100 miles. A shallow lagoon, itself containing reefs and islands, connects the Great Barrier Reef with the Australian shore. The entire complex, encompassing 80,000 square miles, attracts scientific interest with its diverse geological features, birds, animals, and sea life. The area also draws vacationers, and some of its small islands have been developed into tourist havens.

The Great Barrier Reef owes its origin to marine organisms called “polyps,” each the approximate size of a pencil eraser. Over the course of millions of years, their hardened skeletal remains have formed the coral reefs. Today, billions of living polyps are attached to the Great Barrier Reef, combining with other sea creatures to provide the Reef with a variety of vivid colors.

PostScript: The Great Barrier Reef has faced a series of threats, from the crown-of-thorns starfish, which eats living polyps, to petroleum companies. Controls have been placed on drilling in the area, and collecting its coral has been made illegal.