Betsy Ross is one of America s most endearing and beloved characters. Widowed and alone, early in the Revolutionary War, Betsy was approached by three great men. They knew she was a Patriot and a good seamstress. Would she sew America s first flag for them? Fighting heartbreak, loneliness, and poverty, she accepted the challenge willingly. She couldn t fight for independence, but she could certainly sew for it! Tradition tells us that Betsy agreed to make the flag. First she pieced together the red and white stripes. Then she appliquéd thirteen five-point stars one for each colony onto a field of dark blue. But did Betsy Ross really sew America s first Stars and Stripes flag? It wasn t until 1870 that her grandson William Canby told Betsy s story to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the rest is history, so to speak. Americans don t seem to mind that the story can t be proven. They love Betsy Ross and they love her flag whether she really sewed it or not!...

Soviet history begins with bloodshed, oppression, and strife. Civil War stained the Russian landscape with the blood of its people after Nicholas II abdicated his throne to a provisional gov-ernment. The Bolsheviks wanted Russia, and eventually they took her. Peasants became citizens with rights, but the truth is, the civil war only changed the name of their oppressor from czar to Communist dictator. After decades of isolation and sometimes harsh living conditions, Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in an age of reform, but in doing so, he made enemies. Then, Boris Yeltsin championed reform and the rights of the people. When Communist hard-liners made one last effort to regain control, Yeltsin held his ground. Unlike its birth, the death of the Soviet Union saw little bloodshed. After seventy years, even the Communist hard-liners no longer had the stomach for killing their citizens to keep control. The union dissolved in 1991....

What would you do to survive? Most modern Americans never have to answer that question. In 1846, the members of the Donner Party answered it. For months, they walked across the Great Plains. They spent the hottest months of the year using chains and ropes to pull their wagons over mountains. In a hurry to get to California and following bad advice, they forged into unknown territory, hoping to find a quicker route than others had taken. When the winter snows came early to the Sierra Nevada, they were trapped. They were exhausted, with no food and no shelter. One by one, they began to die of starvation and disease. With no rescue in sight, all but one family did the unthinkable they ate the flesh of their dead companions in order to survive. Read the harrowing tale of the early pioneers survival and persistence....

Richard I, king of England from 1189 to 1199, was a brilliant soldier and military strategist. His fierceness in battle during the Third Crusade won him the title of Coeur de Lion, or Lionheart. Even his most formidable enemy, Saladin, respected Richard and feared his army. Saladin s own emirs were terrified of the warrior they called Malek Rik. For decades following Richard s crusade, Muslim mothers called upon his name to frighten their children into behaving. Despite his legendary heart of a lion in battle, he was honorable and generous as a king at least for a king of his time. Richard the Lionheart was a king, a warrior, a hero, and a legend in his own time....

William, the son of a duke and a peasant, spent his childhood in hiding, raised among the Norman peasantry. Lords owing fealty to him would have murdered him if they had found him. He spent his early adult years fighting rebel lords for his birthright. As Duke of Normandy, he claimed the throne of England after the death of Edward the Confessor, King of England, who William said had promised to name him heir. When England refused him, he built a huge fleet, sailed across the channel, and killed Harold, the newly crowned English king, at the Battle of Hastings. One by one, English towns fell to William and his Norman army as they marched toward London. Cowering in fear, Londoners had no choice they opened the gates and made William the Conqueror their first Norman king....

Pocahontas was just a child when her world changed forever. White men from across the ocean built a fort near her village. Most likely, Pocahontas had never seen a white man before. Some of her people feared the settlers, but Pocahontas wanted to know more about them. She took the settlers food and taught Captain John Smith her language. Find out how this bright, brave young girl became an ambassador for her people, helping to keep the peace between her people and the settlers at least for a while. Discover how she charmed all of England, and why she still captures the hearts of Americans....

Some events so strongly affect the world that people remember exactly what they were doing when they heard the news. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy was one of these events. Ask almost any American who was alive at the time where he or she was when his death was announced, and you will get an answer. A Democrat with plans for social reform, President Kennedy was both loved and hated. Despite the political friction his ideas generated, no one would have predicted the events of November 22, 1963, when, supposedly, a lone gunman changed the course of history. Most of Kennedy s idealistic platform went to the grave with him. Almost half a century after his death, the United States continues to battle these same issues....

European explorers searched in vain for a northwest waterway through the North American continent. French traders living in the northeast heard of a great river that the natives called Messi-Sipi to the west. Was this river the Northwest Passage? Or was the Messi-Sipi really the Rio Grande, the river that Hernando de Soto had discovered a century earlier? That s what Father Jacques Marquette and his companion explorer Louis Jolliet hoped to discover in 1673. It s hard to imagine a more unlikely explorer and hero than Father Jacques Marquette, yet his gentle and compassionate nature made him the perfect ambassador to the friendly native peoples they met along the banks of the great Mississippi River....