The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution.

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into free states. American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who had been born into slavery herself, made 13 trips to the South, helping to free over 70 people.

More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and at least five people died in jail.

"O Captain! My Captain!" was written in 1865 in response to the death of Abraham Lincoln. It was the only one of Whitman's poem to appear in anthologies during his lifetime.

The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise reached between delegates from southern states and those from northern states during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. The debate was over whether, and if so, how, slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population for legislative representation and taxing purposes.

The minutemen were among the first to fight in the American Revolution. Their teams constituted about a quarter of the entire militia and were known for being ready at a minute's notice.

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard piloted the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission and became the first American to travel into space. He named his spacecraft Freedom 7. There was just enough room for one person. When reporters asked Shepard what he'd thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he replied, "The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder."

Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson's VP, shot and killed his political rival Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. Although he was never tried for the illegal duel, Hamilton's death ended Burr's political career as Jefferson dumped him from the ticket in the next election.

The U.S. Military used many herbicides/defoliants during the Vietnam War, including Agent Blue, Agent Green, Agent White, Agent Purple, Agent Pink, and Agent Orange. Agent Orange, however, has become the most infamous of this group because it was later shown to have toxic dioxin contaminants which have been blamed for various health problems and birth defects among both the general Vietnamese population and U.S. soldiers who were exposed to it.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to relinquish her seat in the "colored section" to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Parks' act of defiance and the subsequent Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the movement, and she became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation.