Curated playlist
United States Military Academy alumni
- Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was found semiconscious on the streets of Baltimore on the 3rd of October, 1849, wearing clothes that were not his own. He could not explain himself. Four days later, at five in the morning on a Sunday, he was dead. He was…
- Ed White (astronaut)Ed White took his last step back inside a spacecraft on the 27th of January 1967, and by that evening, he was gone. But the moment that defined his life came nearly two years earlier, on the 3rd of June 1965, when he floated free of his…
- Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on the 27th of April 1822, in Ohio, and by the time he died on the 23rd of July 1885, he had commanded the largest army in American history, won the Civil War, and served two terms as…
- Don Carlos BuellDon Carlos Buell arrived at the Battle of Shiloh on the second day of April 1862 convinced that he had saved the Union cause. By the following October, his own soldiers suspected him of treason. He was a general who could organize an army…
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short statement taking full personal responsibility if the assault on Normandy failed. 'If any…
- Buzz AldrinBuzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on the 21st of July 1969 (UTC), nineteen minutes after Neil Armstrong first touched the surface. His first words, spoken into the silence of the lunar landscape, were simply: "Beautiful view."…
- Joseph E. JohnstonJoseph Eggleston Johnston died of pneumonia on the 21st of March, 1891, one month after refusing to put on his hat in the rain at a funeral. The funeral belonged to William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general who had spent the better part…
- Robert E. LeeRobert Edward Lee was born on the 19th of January 1807 at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, into one of the oldest and most storied families in the state. His father was Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, a…
- Joseph HookerJoseph Hooker is one of the most contradictory figures of the American Civil War. He was the general who commanded the largest, best-organized army the Union had ever fielded, then lost his nerve at the moment it mattered most. He fought…
- Frank BormanFrank Borman received a telegram after returning from the Moon. It was from a stranger, and it said simply: "Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968." That single line captures what Borman's most famous mission meant to a country that had spent…
- David ScottDavid Randolph Scott was born on the 6th of June 1932 at Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas. His middle name came directly from that base, a fitting detail for a man whose identity would be shaped at every turn by the places and…
- Braxton BraggBraxton Bragg was walking down a street in Galveston, Texas, on the 27th of September 1876, when he suddenly fell unconscious. Dragged into a nearby drugstore, he was dead within ten to fifteen minutes. He was 59 years old. The physician…
- John Pope (general)John Pope was serving on lighthouse duty when Abraham Lincoln won the presidency. The army chose him as one of four officers to escort the president-elect into Washington, D.C. He even offered to join Lincoln's staff as an aide. Within…
- Alfred WordenAlfred Worden was, for three days in 1971, the most isolated human being who had ever lived. While his crewmates David Scott and James Irwin walked on the Moon, Worden orbited above them alone in the command module Endeavour, at times…
- Michael Collins (astronaut)Michael Collins orbited the Moon thirty times in July 1969 and never set foot on it. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the Sea of Tranquillity, Collins flew alone in the command module Columbia, cut off from Earth for 48…
- Douglas MacArthurDouglas MacArthur was born on the 26th of January 1880 at Little Rock Barracks in Arkansas, the son of a Union Army captain who had earned the Medal of Honor at Missionary Ridge. He would go on to hold commands that no American soldier had…
- Jefferson DavisJefferson F. Davis was born on the 3rd of June, 1808, in a village his father had established in Kentucky, and he died in a borrowed New Orleans home on the 6th of December, 1889, at the age of 81, holding his wife Varina's hand. In the…
- William Tecumseh ShermanWilliam Tecumseh Sherman was born on the 8th of February, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, and by the time he died seventy-one years later, he had helped reshape the way wars are fought and won. His name conjures a single image for most…
- Irvin McDowellIrvin McDowell's name is permanently attached to one of the most humiliating afternoons in American military history. On a summer day in 1861, the Union Army he commanded streamed back toward Washington in a chaotic rout, civilians who had…
- John Bell HoodJohn Bell Hood carried the physical toll of the Civil War in his own body long before he reached his highest command. The historian Bruce Catton later judged the decision to hand him that command harshly. Putting Hood in charge of the Army…
- John SedgwickJohn Sedgwick was standing in the open at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on the 9th of May, 1864. Confederate sharpshooters, about 1,000 yards away, had begun targeting officers directing artillery. His staff was flinching.…
- Quincy Adams GillmoreQuincy Adams Gillmore entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1845. He graduated in 1849 as first in a class of 43 members. This top ranking secured his appointment to the engineers branch of the army. From…
- George B. McClellanGeorge Brinton McClellan arrived in Washington in the summer of 1861 as the man the Union had been waiting for. He had won the only land battles of the war so far, newspapers were calling him "the Napoleon of the Present War", and crowds…
- James LongstreetJames Longstreet was born on the 8th of January 1821 in Edgefield District, South Carolina, and by the end of the Civil War he had become the man Robert E. Lee called his "Old War Horse". That nickname captures the paradox at the center of…
- Earl Van DornEarl Van Dorn died not on a battlefield but at his own desk, shot in the back of the head by a doctor who accused him of seducing his wife. It was the 7th of May, 1863, in the Spring Hill mansion where Van Dorn had made his headquarters,…
- Gordon GrangerGordon Granger was born on the 6th of November 1821, in Joy, Wayne County, New York, and by the end of his life he had shaped two of the most consequential moments in American history. One of those moments unfolded on a battlefield in…
- John SchofieldOn the 2nd of July, 1892, John McAllister Schofield awarded himself the Medal of Honor. He was Commanding General of the United States Army. The award recognized conduct in a Missouri battle in August 1861. The citation described him as…
- Timothy LearyTimothy Francis Leary was arrested 36 times between the 1960s and 1970s, a record that tells you something about how seriously the American establishment took him. President Richard Nixon called him "the most dangerous man in America".…
- Philip SheridanPhilip Henry Sheridan was born on the 6th of March, 1831, the third of six children of Irish Catholic immigrants from Killinkere parish in County Cavan, Ireland. He grew up in Somerset, Ohio, and stood only 5 feet 5 inches tall. Abraham…
- Albert Sidney JohnstonAlbert Sidney Johnston died at the Battle of Shiloh on the 6th of April 1862. He was the highest-ranking officer killed on either side in the entire Civil War. The bullet entered behind his right knee, clipping part of his popliteal…
- David HunterDavid Hunter rode on Abraham Lincoln's inaugural train in February 1861, shoulder to shoulder with the president-elect as the locomotive made its way from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C. Somewhere in Buffalo, the crowd pressed…
- George CrookGeorge Crook was born on the 8th of September 1828 on a farm near Taylorsville, Ohio, and by the time he died in 1890, he had fought in two of the defining conflicts of 19th-century America. He led infantry charges through waist-deep…
- George Henry ThomasGeorge Henry Thomas was born on the 31st of July, 1816, into a plantation family in Southampton County, Virginia, five miles from the North Carolina border. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, his family turned his portrait…
- Leonidas PolkLeonidas Polk was born on the 10th of April 1806 in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father William served as a Revolutionary War veteran and later became a prosperous planter with Scottish and Anglo-Huguenot ancestry. Polk briefly attended…
- William W. AverellWilliam Woods Averell was born on the 5th of November 1832, in Cameron, New York, and before he was done, he would be the only Union general to win a major victory in the Shenandoah Valley before Philip Sheridan arrived to take charge. Yet…
- George MeadeGeorge Gordon Meade woke in the early morning hours of the 28th of June 1863, to a messenger at his tent. He assumed he was being arrested. Army politics had dogged him for years, and at that moment in the middle of a war, a midnight visit…
- P. G. T. BeauregardP. G. T. Beauregard ordered the first shots of the American Civil War fired from Fort Johnson in the early hours of the 12th of April 1861. A 34-hour bombardment followed, and when the smoke cleared over Charleston Harbor, the general who…
- Ambrose BurnsideAmbrose Burnside is best remembered for two catastrophic failures, but the word his name spawned is used every day by people who have never heard of him. Born on the 23rd of May, 1824, in Liberty, Indiana, Burnside rose from a tailor's…
- Nathaniel LyonNathaniel Lyon died on the 10th of August, 1861, shot through the heart at about 9:30 in the morning on a Missouri hillside. He was the first Union general killed in the American Civil War. At the moment he fell, his forces numbered…
- William Babcock HazenWilliam Babcock Hazen was born on the 27th of September 1830 in West Hartford, Vermont. He moved to Ohio when he was three years old and spent his boyhood in Hiram. There he formed a close personal friendship with James A. Garfield who…
- William RosecransWilliam Starke Rosecrans was born on the 6th of September 1819, on a farm near Little Taylor Run in Kingston Township, Ohio, and by the time he died on the 11th of March 1898, his casket lay draped by the same headquarters flag that had…