A boy, an old chief, and a debt that took a century to pay: Chief Joseph, the Bear Paw siege, and an unlikely friendship.

How two WWII veterans, Charles Schulz and Rod Serling, smuggled the truth into America's living rooms.

An evening with American Gold Star Mothers, and the neighbor who showed John the photograph she carries of her son.

Elgin Staples went over the side at Savo Island with a rubber belt around his chest. His mother may have inspected it herself.

Four days before the bloodiest day in American history, a corporal from Indiana handed his general the enemy's plan.

An afternoon in Needham, Massachusetts, with the children of WWII veterans, and perspectives on D-Day 82 years later.

A man in Waterloo, New York, nearly threw out a box. Inside: statements from 120 American POWs, missing since 1945.

September 6, 1620: 102 people set out in one leaking ship. What they did before stepping ashore founded a country.

Hitler ordered Paris destroyed, and the explosives were in place. One man refused to give the signal. Many others pushed him.

August 19, 1812: one American frigate against a British warship. Half an hour later, a discouraged country had its proof.

It came down to one state, one deadlocked chamber, and a 24-year-old with a red rose and his mother's letter in his pocket.

August 16, 1940: forty-eight volunteers with no manual made the first official parachute jump in U.S. Army history. Airborne started with them.

At home the crowds filled the streets. In the Pacific, the men who'd done the fighting heard the news and sat down in silence.

August 7, 1782: George Washington created the first American military decoration a common soldier could earn. It was made of purple cloth.

One aircraft and one bomb ended a war and opened a new age. Weeks earlier, its builders had asked the President to think twice.

August 1, 1944: Warsaw rose expecting help within a week. The help never came. What a city does when it discovers it's alone.

The USS Indianapolis sank in twelve minutes after delivering the Hiroshima bomb. Correcting the record took 55 years and a 12-year-old.

John worked two years inside the granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Its history, and why it shouldn't be painted.

In an election year he was expected to lose, Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces. The road began on a Greyhound bus.

A 91-degree day at Arlington with soldiers of Ukraine, ending at the grave of an Iwo Jima flag-raiser born in the Carpathians.