Queensborough Community College Department of History

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki on August 9. Approximately 90,000–166,000 civilians were killed in Hiroshima and another 60,000–80,000 were killed in Nagasaki.

Image: A Japanese baby sits crying alone in the rubble of Hiroshima. Getty Images

The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found on August 4, 1964. The young civil-rights activists were murdered and buried near Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had disappeared on June 21 while working to increase black voter registration.

Image: “Missing Persons Poster” provided by the FBI in 1964 (Public Domain)

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/books/review/the-peoples-historian-howard-zinn-dave-zirin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.21A.m5c7.Uw6vI48AA2CC&smid=url-share

Book Review: ‘The People’s Historian,’ by Dave Zirin (Gift Article) Dave Zirin traces the radical career of Howard Zinn, whose “A People’s History of the United States” has sold millions of copies.

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Six weeks after arriving in the United States from France, on July 31, 1777, a 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette volunteered to fight for the Continental Army — with no pay — and was commissioned as a major-general.

Four years later, he would lead Virginia troops against General Cornwallis' forces at Yorktown, initiating the siege that resulted in British surrender and the eventual end of the Revolutionary War.

🖼️: "Portrait of Gilbert Motier the Marquis De La Fayette as a Lieutenant General, 1791" by Joseph-Désiré Court, 1834.

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in 1972, a journalist exposed the Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee — a 40-year experiment where the U.S. Public Health Service withheld treatment from hundreds of Black men with syphilis without their informed consent.

The study only ended after this exposure. It took until 1997 for the U.S. government to issue a formal apology.

This injustice is a reminder of why trust in public health and government institutions must be earned and safeguarded.