On December 20, 1803, the United States took formal possession of the Louisiana Territory from France in a ceremony at New Orleans, completing the most consequential land acquisition in American history. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the young nation overnight, adding 828,000 square miles of territory for the astonishingly low price of approximately…
On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, in one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history. The fire started on the eighth floor of the Asch Building in Greenwich Village, likely from a discarded cigarette igniting…
