Tagged: history

March 19, 2013 marks 10 years since the beginning of the war in Iraq. A total of 3,489 Americans died in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Nearly another 32,000 were wounded in action. The numbers obscure the thousands of individual stories from the War in Iraq. We hear stories of those who fought, worked and died in the war.

Seattle schoolteacher Sandra Aguila became a US citizen through the last major immigration reform bill, which President Ronald Reagan signed in 1986. Aguila had arrived in the US one year earlier at age 25. She spoke almost no English. “I could only say ‘good morning,’” she laughs.

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to hold the Secretary of State position for former president Bill Clinton. She became known as an advocate for peace in the Middle East and for bringing war criminals to justice. In her new memoir, she chronicles her traumatic early life in Prague during the Nazi occupation, through the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War.

When Thomas Edison displayed the first lightbulbs the reaction was utter amazement. University of Tennessee history professor Ernest Freeberg talks with Ross Reynolds about how Edison’s wonder invented modern America.

American culture loves celebrity. Magazines and television shows follow the lives of celebrities like an ongoing mini-series -- until they die. That’s when we typically set down one tale and start another. But the story doesn’t always end there. Some famous corpses had very curious fates. Seattle writer Bess Lovejoy is author of "Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses." She joins us.