Stories That
Shaped a Nation

Begun in 1990, completed in 2003 — three billion base pairs sequenced for $2.7 billion. The data went into the public domain. The questions it opened are still being answered.

ARPANET sent its first message on October 29, 1969: “lo” — the system crashed before it finished “login.” The network was funded by the Pentagon to survive a nuclear war.

At 1:20 a.m. on June 28, 1969, plainclothes officers raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street. The patrons fought back. Six nights of protest followed.

On July 20, 1969, at 4:17 p.m. EDT, Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility. The race that put a flag there began with a Cold War deficit and ended with one footprint.

A. Philip Randolph called for it in 1941; Bayard Rustin organized it in 1963. Two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered on August 28. King delivered his speech that afternoon.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that “separate but equal” had no place in public schools. Linda Brown was in third grade. Implementation took decades.

In secret across 30 sites and 600,000 workers between 1939 and 1945, the United States built the first nuclear weapons. Trinity, July 16. Hiroshima, August 6. Nagasaki, August 9.

Drought, dryland farming, and the Great Depression turned the southern Plains into a wasteland. Two and a half million people left. The federal government rewrote what it owed them.

Six million Black Americans left the South between 1916 and 1970, remaking the cities of the North and West. Jacob Lawrence painted them in sixty panels.

On December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, Orville Wright lifted off the sands for twelve seconds and 120 feet. Five years later, Wilbur flew for over an hour.

Twelve million arrivals passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. The 1924 Immigration Act closed the gates for the next forty years.

The Central Pacific and Union Pacific met at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. The Chinese laborers who built the western half were not in the photograph.