For eight years Rick Rescorla made a Manhattan bank practice walking down the stairs. On September 11, 2001, they knew the way.

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.

In the summer of 1948, thirty Berlin children at a fence asked an American pilot for nothing. Two sticks of gum changed that.

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.

John Paul Jones won the most famous fight in American naval history by lashing his ship to a bigger one.

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.

Twenty-five years ago, a president climbed onto a wrecked fire engine with a borrowed bullhorn and found his voice.

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.

August 30, 1945: MacArthur landed unarmed in a nation of 70 million enemies, and set the terms of the occupation in an hour.

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.