On May 7, 1915, the British passenger liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew and sparking outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. When the Lusitania set out on its final voyage on May 1, World War I had been raging…
On May 12–13, 1865, 800 Federal troops under Colonel Theodore H. Barrett engaged Colonel John S. Ford‘s 350 Confederates outside Brownsville, Texas, in the Battle of Palmito (Palmetto) Ranch, the last battle of the Civil War. Although an informal agreement to avoid conflict had existed between the Federals and Confederates along the Rio Grande since…
This May 8 marks the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day in 1945. If you have family members who served in World War II, or are just interested in the time period, take a look at Fold3’s World War II Collection, which you can access for free from May 1st to 15th. The…
This month marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. He was shot on April 14 around 10 o’clock at night while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC. The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, entered the Lincolns’ box and shot the president in the back of the head before…
April was a big month in the American Civil War. Not only did the conflict begin in April 1861, but this year marks the 150th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant, as well as Lincoln’s assassination, in April 1865. In commemoration of the Civil War and Confederate History Month, Fold3 invites you to explore all…
On April 9, 1865, 150 years ago this month, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to the Union’s Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, signaling the beginning of the end of the Civil War. After Lee’s hold on Richmond and Petersburg broke, he hoped to take his army…
In the early morning of April 27, 1865, boilers on the steamboat SS Sultana exploded, killing more than a thousand recently released POWs in what is often called the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. Toward the end of the Civil War, huge numbers of paroled military prisoners needed to be sent home, which was…
