Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly into space on April 12, 1961, beating American Alan Shepard’s flight by three weeks.

The Battle of Little Bighorn was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army.

Jimi Hendrix was first discovered by Americans during his openly-sexual performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

At the height of the Great Depression, when 25% of eligible workers found themselves homeless and unemployed, hundreds of shantytown slums sprang up across the nation.

The Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death of 1347, claimed the lives of 1/3rd of Europe’s population.

Native Americans used their Indian languages to cipher/decipher battlefield communications, which left the Nazis unable to intercept the Allies’ battle strategies.

San Francisco’s earthquake of 1906 destroyed 500 city blocks when broken gas mains and a crippled water supply burned down much of the city.