The American Record

On this day in 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his trapped army at Yorktown, Virginia — and sent a subordinate to hand over his sword rather than face Washington himself.

On October 18, 1775, a British warship gave the Maine town of Falmouth two hours to surrender — then burned it to the ground. The fire that followed helped push Congress toward building a navy.

On a battered Virginia peninsula in 1781, a lone drummer climbs onto a parapet and beats a signal that will end the Revolutionary War's final major battle — and open the door to American independence.

On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a small band into Harpers Ferry, Virginia, seizing a federal armory in hopes of sparking a slave uprising. It didn't come — but the raid still helped push the nation toward war.

On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel slammed into North Carolina as a Category 4 storm, then raced north and tore through Toronto the same night. One hurricane, two countries, hundreds of lives lost in a single day.

On October 14, 1943, the Eighth Air Force sent 291 B-17 bombers back to the ball bearing factories of Schweinfurt without fighter escort the whole way — and paid a price that would reshape American air doctrine.

In an Atlanta lab in 1976, a virologist aims an electron microscope at a mysterious sample from Central Africa and sees something no one has ever named. This is the story of how Ebola got its shape.

A lookout's cry in the dark ends ten weeks at sea and opens a new world to Europe — on the day Columbus sights land, believing he's reached the Indies.

In 1906, San Francisco orders Japanese and Korean children into a single segregated school, igniting a diplomatic crisis that lands on Theodore Roosevelt's desk and reshapes American immigration policy for a generation.

On a Long Island beach in 1814, the crew of a wrecked revenue cutter dragged their cannon up a bluff and kept fighting the Royal Navy for three days straight.

Two months after Detroit fell, Lieutenant Jesse Elliott leads a hundred men in open boats against two anchored British warships on Lake Erie — and gives America its first naval win of the War of 1812.

On a drought-stricken Kentucky battlefield in 1862, two armies stumbled into the bloodiest fight the state would ever see — over nothing more than a few pools of stagnant water.

Four weeks after September 11, the Taliban refuses to give up Osama bin Laden. American and British warplanes open the skies over Afghanistan on a war that would last twenty years.

On October 6, 1777, a British force storms two half-finished forts guarding the Hudson River — and learns that breaking a chain is easier than winning a war.

On October 5, 1813, William Henry Harrison's cavalry shattered a thinning British line on the Thames River, and Tecumseh fell defending a confederacy he'd spent ten years building.

On this day in 1777, George Washington launched a daring four-column dawn assault on British-held Germantown — and watched a wall of fog turn his own army against itself.

On October 3, 1962, astronaut Walter Schirra rode Sigma 7 through six orbits of the Earth, a quiet, nearly flawless flight that gave NASA the confidence to aim for a full day in space.

On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent twelve proposed amendments to the states for ratification. Ten would become the Bill of Rights — though one waited two centuries to take effect.

A magazine editor's shock at a trampled meadow, a naturalist's two essays, and a president's signature combine to create Yosemite National Park in 1890 — but not quite the park John Muir wanted.

On September 30, 1949, the Berlin Airlift officially ended — fifteen months and over two million tons of supplies after it began, having proven American power could win a Cold War standoff without firing a shot.

Thirty-two months after Challenger, five veteran astronauts strap into Discovery to find out if America can still fly. This is the story of NASA's Return to Flight.

On September 28, 1781, George Washington led the combined American and French army out of Williamsburg to encircle a trapped British force at Yorktown — the last great maneuver of the Revolutionary War.

In Berlin, three foreign ministers sign a pact aimed less at each other than at a still-neutral America. The Tripartite Pact of 1940 drew the lines that would define the next five years of world war.

On September 25, 1789, Congress sent twelve amendments to the states, ten of which became the Bill of Rights. One forgotten amendment in that package would wait two centuries for its ratification.