The first atomic bomb was detonated in a test at Alamogordo, New Mexico on the morning of July 16, 1945. Read more about the explosion and it’s implications on the world’s stage from these PBS shows:

A young girl from Oregon finds a curious, yellowed circus program in her school’s drama closet that reads “Official Program of Cobina Wright’s Society Circus for the benefit of the Boy Scout Foundation, Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt, President, Season 1933.” The program seems to promote some kind of high-society theme party at the opulent Waldorf-Astoria [...]

On July 15, 1960, John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination for president. While the Democrats held their convention at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, Kennedy gave his acceptance speech in front of some 80,000 at the nearby Los Angeles Coliseum.
In Kennedy’s Presidential Nomination acceptance speech, he said:
I am fully aware of the fact that [...]

The documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is directing a new television series celebrating the history of America’s national parks over 150 years. The 12-hour, 6-part film will air on PBS in the fall of 2009.
Following in the tradition of The Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, is an upcoming major documentary [...]

Bastille Day, the French national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille, which took place on July 14, 1789, and marked the beginning of the French Revolution.
Without losing sight of the dire inequities in 18th-century France, the film “Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution,” which originally aired on PBS in 2006, paints a surprising portrait [...]

Archaeologists digging on the Ferry Farm site in Fredericksburg, Virginia found remnants of an old farmhouse believed to be where George Washington spend most of his boyhood. The house was demolished by Union troops during the civil war. Now that the house has been found, a re-creation of the 1740s structure is planned.

This one-hour film tells the dramatic story of the famous landmark’s construction through interviews with historians, architects, and engineers, while weaving in contemporary portraits from present day New Yorkers who describe their personal connections to Grand Central. Watch entire episode online.

Franz Boas was known as the “Father of American Anthropology”; in the early 20th Century he influenced a generation of anthropologists and changed the way Americans thought about race. Read more about Boas from programs that have aired on PBS in the past…

This season on History Detectives, the audience can become a history detective by getting involved with their new exciting feature – Web Investigations. History Detectives post a mystery and you help them solve it. Each week, updates and new leads – provided by the audience and their own History Detectives – will be released.

Harvard and Oxford historian Ferguson wrote the companion book to the documentary series, which provides a controversial angle on WWII. Fareed Zakaria interviewed him about the book in 2006. Watch…