Reconciliation Park

This year will mark the 150th anniversary of the largest mass execution in United States history. At 10 AM on December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota Indians were executed by the government in Mankato, Minnesota, marking the end of the Minnesota Dakota (Sioux) War. Today, a memorial statue stands in Reconciliation Park, the site of the execution.

James Meredith

Born in 1933, James Meredith, pictured here in 1962, was the first African-American admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi. 

Where It All Began

On July 2, 1962, retailer Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store, pictured above, in Rogers, Arkansas.  The company now operates 10,000 stores in 27 countries, serving 200 million customers  weekly.

Operation Crossroads

On July 25, 1946, the United States conducted Operation Crossroads, a nuclear test in the lagoon of tiny Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. Many decommissioned ships from the US Navy fleet were purposely placed in the lagoon for the test in order to study any effects a nuclear bomb would have on them. In preparation for the test, residents of the atoll were relocated to another island, and Bikini remains uninhabited to this day as a result of unsafe radiation levels.

The Last Living Civil War Widow

In 1934, 19 year old Mandie Acklin married Civil War Veteran William Cantrell, who was 86 years old.  When Cantrell passed away three years later,  Mandie became known as the last living Civil War widow. She died in 2008 at the age of 93. 

The Search For Noah's Ark

Could this be the remains of Noah's Ark?  This recent satellite image taken over the northwest corner of Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey shows an anomaly located about 15,300 feet up the mountainside. Some experts believe this could actually be the long lost ark. 

The Perfect Exposure

A photographer catches the Golden Gate Bridge during construction in 1929. This view from  Sausalito looking west shows the city of San Francisco in the distance across the bay.

The Lonely Hearts Killers

From 1947 through 1949, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck were believed to have killed as many as 20 women. Known as The Lonely Hearts Killers, the couple would befriend people seeking companionship via the newspapers, eventually killing and robbing them. As a result of their being convicted for only one of the murders, Fernandez and Beck were both executed in the electric chair at New York's Sing Sing Prison on March 8, 1951.

Men Only

Race officials are pictured attempting to remove 20 year old Syracuse University junior Katherine Switzer from the Boston Marathon in 1967. About two miles from the finish line, Switzer abruptly inserted herself in the race, attempting to break the long standing tradition of the male only event.

Long Lost Bible

Twenty year old George Ford, fighting in World War I for the Sherwood Foresters, was killed in action in 1918. His personal belongings were packed in a box and sent to his family in Nottingham, England. Among those belongings was a small Bible which Ford kept in his breast pocket. In 1977, while doing some repair work on a house in Nottingham, a builder discovered the Bible, and found that it had been gathering dust in the attic for 59 years. After a 35 year search by the builder's son, the Bible was returned to George Ford's nephews in Arnold, Nottinghampshire.