Matthew Calbraith Perry was a Commodore of the U.S. Navy and commanded a number of ships. He served in several wars, most notably in the Mexican-American War and the War of 1812. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West...

Under James Knox Polk,11th US President (1845-1849), the United States grew by more than a million square miles, across Texas and New Mexico to California and even Oregon. More than any other President, Polk exercised "Manifest Destiny," a...

George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West. Following a brief career as a lawyer, Catlin produced two major collections of paintings of American Indians and pu...

Joseph Henry was an American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was the secretary for the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a precursor of the Smithsonian Institution. He was highly...

Frederick Catherwood was an English artist, architect and explorer, best remembered for his meticulously detailed drawings of the ruins of the Maya civilization. He explored Mesoamerica in the mid 19th century with writer John Lloyd Stephen...

Charles Goodyear was the inventor of vulcanization, a process that makes rubber harder, less soluble, and more durable. It is at the heart of rubber compounding, which played a key role at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Goodyear ob...

Born into desperate poverty at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Millard Fillmore, 13th US President (1850-1853), climbed to the highest office in the land -- and inherited a nation breaking into fragments over the question of slavery. De...

Brigham Young was a leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and was the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death. Young was also the first governor of the Utah Territory. Young had a variety...

The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles (2,144,000 square kilometers or 529,920,000 acres) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The U.S. paid 50 million francs (...

Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was founder of transcendentalism, Emerson believed in the power of intuition over scientific reason and in the strength of nature and the human spirit. In one of his best-known essays, "Self Reliance...

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States, departing in May, 1804 from near St. Louis on the Mississippi...

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. Nathaniel Hathorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make h...

Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States (1853-1857), came to office during a period of growing tension between the North and South. A politician of limited ability, Pierce was behind one of the most crucial pieces of legisl...

Joseph Smith, Jr. was the American religious figure who founded the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism. Smith's followers declared him to be the first latter-day prophet, whose mission was to restore the original Christian c...

John Lloyd Stephens was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. Stephens was a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization throughout Middle America and in the planning of the Panama railroad. Stephens read with interest...