USA

Richard Cavendish explains how, on September 12th, 1959, the Soviet Union launched Luna 2, the first spacecraft to successfully reach the Moon.

In 1969 men set foot on the Moon for the first time. The Apollo space programme that put them there was the product of an age of optimism and daring very different from our own, argues André Balogh.

Richard Cavendish remembers the capture and slaying of the definitive American gangster on July 22nd 1934.

Mark Bryant looks at the lampooning of two hugely unpopular measures imposed during the administrations of two of the United States’ most distinguished presidents.

John Swift examines a vital element of the Cold War and assesses the motives of the Superpowers.

Richard Cavendish remembers the first Native American hero, who died on 17 February 1909.

The conflict between supporters of Darwin’s theory of evolution and Creationists is often portrayed as the latest skirmish in an age-old struggle between science and religion. It is anything but, claims Thomas Dixon, who argues that Creationism, and its pseudo-scientific offspring, ‘Intelligent Design’, are products peculiar to US history.

The rupture of a giant molasses tank in Boston just after the First World War caused devastation and led to the longest legal case in the city’s history.