History.com Editors Archives

Lusitania

Prelude to Lusitania: Germany Announces Unrestricted Submarine Warfare When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson (1856‑1924) pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the […]

Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Mott’s Quaker Upbringing Born on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Mott was raised in a family of Quakers, the second of five children. Abiding by the Quaker tenet that men and women were equal in the eyes of God, Mott grew up with parents who lived out their faith: Her father Thomas Coffin […]

Lucretia Garfield

Lucretia Garfield (1832‑1918) was an American first lady (March 4–September 19, 1881), and the wife of James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States. Although she served as first lady for only a few months because of her husband’s assassination, she was independent‑minded, well‑educated and a talented speaker and her approach toward her […]

Charles “Lucky” Luciano

Lucky Luciano’s Early Years Luciano was born Salvatore Luciana in 1897 in the Sicilian sulfur mining town of Lercara Friddi. When he was 10 his family immigrated to New York, where by age 14 Luciano had racked up a record of arrests. Did you know? Gangster Charles Luciano told various stories about how he got […]

Louisiana Purchase

France in the New World Beginning in the 17th century, France explored the Mississippi River valley and established scattered settlements in the region. By the middle of the 18th century, France controlled more of the present‑day United States than any other European power: from New Orleans northeast to the Great Lakes and northwest to modern‑day […]

Louis XIV

Early Life of Louis XIV Born on September 5, 1638, to King Louis XIII of France and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria, the future Louis XIV was his parents’ first child after 23 years of marriage; in recognition of this apparent miracle, he was christened Louis‑Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.” A younger brother, Philippe, […]

Battle of Long Island

On August 27, 1776, the British Army successfully moved against the American Continental Army led by George Washington. The battle, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn, was part of a British campaign to seize control of New York and thereby isolate New England from the rest of the colonies. Washington’s defeat could have led […]

Battle of the Little Bighorn

Battle of the Little Bighorn: Mounting Tensions Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse (c.1840‑77), leaders of the Sioux on the Great Plains, strongly resisted the mid‑19th‑century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to Indian reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements […]

Liliuokalani

Queen Liliuokalani (1838‑1917) was the last sovereign of the Kalākaua dynasty, which had ruled a unified Hawaiian kingdom since 1810.

Statue of Liberty

Origins of the Statue of Liberty Around 1865, as the American Civil War drew to a close, the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye proposed that France create a statue to give to the United States in celebration of that nation’s success in building a viable democracy. The sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, known for largescale sculptures, […]

Battles of Lexington and Concord

Lead‑Up to the Battles of Lexington and Concord Starting in 1764, Great Britain enacted a series of measures aimed at raising revenue from its 13 American colonies. Many of those measures, including the Sugar Act, Stamp Act and Townshend Acts, generated fierce resentment among the colonists, who protested against “taxation without representation.” Boston, the site […]

Leonidas

Leonidas (c. 530‑480 B.C.) was a king of the city‑state of Sparta from about 490 B.C. until his death at the Battle of Thermopylae against the Persian army in 480 B.C.