Fact-checking the past
History should be examined with the same discipline as current events: start with the record, distinguish documentation from interpretation, and make the path back to primary sources visible.
September 11 Memorial
We remember the lives lost, the families changed forever, and those who ran toward danger.
On September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center towers, one struck the Pentagon, and passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 resisted the hijackers before the plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The attacks killed 2,977 victims.
American turning points
Search names, laws, dates, events, or primary-record descriptions, then narrow the archive by subject.
42 records shown
The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing that the thirteen colonies regarded themselves as independent states rather than part of the British Empire.
Delegates signed the U.S. Constitution in 1787. After ratification by the required states, the new federal government began operating in 1789.
Congress enacted the first federal statute establishing rules for naturalization under the Constitution. Its eligibility restrictions reflected the boundaries of citizenship law at the founding and were changed by later Congresses.
The United States fought a civil war after eleven Southern states seceded. The conflict preserved the Union and ended legal slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War, declaring enslaved people in areas then in rebellion to be free and making emancipation a central Union war aim.
Congress enacted an early federal immigration restriction aimed at specified categories of immigrants arriving from Asia. It marked a major expansion of federal control over admission.
Congress suspended immigration of Chinese laborers and created a landmark nationality-based restriction in federal immigration law.
Ellis Island opened as a federal immigration inspection station and became the principal processing point for millions of immigrants arriving through the Port of New York.
Congress expanded categories of people excluded from admission and established a broad geographic barred zone affecting immigration from much of Asia.
The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited the United States and the states from denying the right to vote on account of sex, marking a major expansion of constitutional voting rights for women.
Congress imposed numerical immigration limits using nationality-based quotas, significantly changing the structure of legal immigration.
Congress established a national-origins quota system that sharply restricted immigration and reinforced nationality-based admission limits.
Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor and other military installations in Hawaii. The United States entered World War II immediately afterward.
Executive Order 9066 authorized military exclusion zones that led to the forced removal and incarceration of more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens.
A series of U.S.-Mexico agreements and federal measures brought Mexican workers to the United States for temporary agricultural and railroad labor. The program also generated extensive documented disputes over wages, deductions, working conditions, and worker protections.
Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act, permitted Chinese nationals to naturalize, and established a small annual immigration quota for China.
The McCarran-Walter Act consolidated immigration and nationality statutes into the Immigration and Nationality Act while retaining the national-origins quota system and revising admission, exclusion, and naturalization rules.
The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause, rejecting the doctrine of “separate but equal” in public education.
The Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in major areas of public life, including employment and public accommodations, and strengthened federal civil-rights enforcement.
The Hart-Celler Act abolished the national-origins quota system and established a new framework emphasizing family relationships and employment-based immigration.
The Voting Rights Act targeted racial discrimination in voting and gave the federal government stronger tools to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment.
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit.
Richard Nixon resigned the presidency amid the Watergate scandal after investigations exposed abuses of power and obstruction connected to the break-in and its aftermath.
Congress established a modern statutory framework for refugee admissions and asylum and aligned the U.S. refugee definition with international standards.
IRCA created legalization programs for certain qualifying undocumented residents while making it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire workers unauthorized for employment and establishing employment-verification requirements.
The Americans with Disabilities Act became law, prohibiting disability discrimination across employment, public services, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications.
Congress revised legal immigration categories and numerical limits, expanded employment-based immigration, and created the diversity immigrant visa program.
A truck bomb destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. The attack remains the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history.
Congress enacted major immigration and welfare legislation that changed removal procedures, unlawful-presence consequences, enforcement authorities, and eligibility rules affecting many non-citizens seeking public benefits.
Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two struck the World Trade Center, one struck the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers and crew resisted the hijackers. The attacks killed 2,977 victims.
The USA PATRIOT Act became law after the September 11 attacks, expanding and changing federal counterterrorism, surveillance, information-sharing, and investigative authorities.
Congress created the Department of Homeland Security after September 11. Immigration functions were divided among USCIS, ICE, and CBP.
United States and coalition forces began military operations in Iraq. The war removed Saddam Hussein from power and developed into a prolonged conflict whose intelligence, legal, military, and policy record remains extensively documented and debated.
A severe financial crisis destabilized major institutions and credit markets. Congress enacted the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law, making major changes to health-insurance markets, Medicaid, federal health policy, consumer protections, and the financing of health coverage.
The Department of Homeland Security announced DACA, allowing certain people who arrived in the United States as children to request deferred action and, if eligible, work authorization. DACA did not create lawful permanent resident status or citizenship.
The Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license marriages between two people of the same sex and recognize lawful same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Federal public-charge regulations changed substantially across administrations and generated extensive litigation.
COVID-19 spread widely across the United States in 2020, producing a national public-health emergency and major disruptions to health care, schools, workplaces, travel, elections, the economy, and daily life.
A crowd breached the U.S. Capitol while Congress was meeting to count Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election, disrupting the joint session before Congress reconvened and completed the count later that night.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, holding that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and returning abortion policy primarily to elected federal and state governments subject to other constitutional constraints.
Federal public-charge policy changed again in 2026 and became the subject of new legal challenges. The operative rule, effective dates, judicial orders, and eventual disposition belong to the continuing historical record.
Original laws, court opinions, government records, photographs, audio, video, and contemporaneous documents anchor the record.
Where historians or witnesses disagree, the disagreement belongs in the record rather than being silently resolved for the reader.
If an entry changes because stronger evidence appears, the correction history should remain part of the page.