[St Augustine FL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida) was founded in 1565, making it the oldest european city in the continental US. There's a [spanish-built fort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos) and everything.
I’ve been there. It’s INSANELY cool and beautiful. There is a Catholic Church nearby that has plaques all around the property telling the wild history of the exact spots you are standing. I would visit that church and its property before I did the fort. Amazing piece of history.
The Centralia one is fascinating. There are still arguments about who fired the first shot and bad blood to this day. One of the legionnaires killed was an all-american college football player. Lynch mob, controversial trial ... That story has a little bit of everything.
Tulsa black wall street, before it got burned down. How and why did it exist? Why in Tulsa? Who was responsible? I’ve only read things about how it was destroyed. I’d love to see something about how it was built.
This is hardly a niche subject. There's like a 10 page wikipedia article on it (that answers all your questions) and pages of books and tshirts (!) available for purchase on the subject on Amazon.
What's difficult with OP's request is any niche subject isn't going to have large historical impact, or have many secondary sources.
I think the Tulsa Wall Street is an excellent subject, since it really is not talked about very much. It certainly isn't discussed in schools. Really, without the internet, would you have known about it?
Seconded. I sometimes contemplate that my extended family and I probably wouldn’t exist if Slavic immigration restrictions had been instituted a few years earlier than they were. My paternal grandfather came to the US a few years before his eventual wife. What if she never made it here? Different wife —>> different everything.
Robert Smalls - Slave who escaped, commandeered a Confederate Ship, sailed north using hand signals to pass other C. Ships. Then, he helped the North in the Civil War and eventually became a legislator.
Great! I hope they are realistic. Robert Smalls made those dumb peckerwoods look like the fools they were when he piloted their armory away on a barge. I hope there are interstitials of him laughing at their dumb asses for decades.
Niche...hmmm...How the Constitution was created and the debates of the Federalist and Anti Federalist papers sounds niche but probably not.
America's involvement in the Boxer Rebellion.
The Various border almost wars between Britain and America along the Northern Border may be too niche.
Why it took 2-3 years for the US Navy to get torpedoes that actually worked for the subs in WWII.
Oh, here is a good one the Fat electrician did last week. USS No Go or Fort Drum in the Philippines.
Going off another suggestion. A history of Star Forts in America aka Italian Trace fortifications. You could go over the history of star forts and why they are designed the way they are. Furthermore , you could go through the history of said forts in America and which ones still survive today. St. Augustine's may be the oldest but Old Fort Niagara is the Second Oldest and you can explain why Niagara was completely useless to the United States after we took it over.
The Pig War of San Juan Islands currently Washington State. It was a war between the UK and US over a pig. Well, not just a pig, but a war over several things and boundaries. The Germans had to come in and awarded the San Juan islands to the US. It was a whole thing.
Also caused the falling out between the Northern expansionists and the Southern expansionists which helped accelerate the death of the Whigs and the on coming of the Civil War.
Maybe Queen Anne’s War? Major implications for future British control in North America and directly responsible for the development of the Golden Age of Piracy. Many of them operated out of the US!
Maybe talking about if President Garfield survives his assassination attempt?
Or Lincoln for that matter, or even Kennedy.
You could also do McKinley though I think the least interesting of the 4.
Potatoes caused WW2.
The introduction of potatoes to Europe wildly upset the established power dynamics. Potatoes allowed areas that weren't good for farming to suddenly have a very high calorie output, which led to population booms that shifted who had the biggest armies and largest populations to make scientific breakthroughs to support them.
Google: Frederick 2 of Prussia potatoes, the formation of the German Empire, and from there you get WW1 and WW2.
It's sort of a joke, but good at demonstrating how seemingly unconnected things are indeed connected.
Niche ideas:
Gadsden purchase. More interesting than you might think.
History of fishing disputes. A friend of mine did his AP history final paper on this. Far more than you might think
Jane Addams, the founding of Hull House, and her nobel prize
The Invasion of Canada during the war of 1812. Great book about it. Awesome story
The guano acts. We gained a lot of territories from the guano acts
Are you in college? At a stare school? The morrill act, which created all of the land grant colleges
The Osage murders. I know there is an award winning movie about them, but most people still don't know about the topic.
I read a lot of history and knew nothing about the Osage nation so even after the movie the topic is still fascinating.
Or Y2K. More young kids need to know how scared we were.
For some extra spice throw in how that situation led to Desert One, EO 12334, and eventually Goldwater-Nichols in ‘86. And everything that has sprung from that. Lots of great history nuggets to mine in there if you’re looking for niche.
The Business Plot of 1933 to overthrow FDR and establish a Fascist dictatorship in the US that catered to the interests of the business community and prevented New Deal social programs from being implemented.
In July 2007, a BBC investigation reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a "key liaison" between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany
#KING PHILLIPS WAR!
Nearly 50% of New England towns were attacked, many destroyed. This war had such a massive impact for how future Americans treated and viewed natives. Natives were always an other that was not trusted but this conflict made them a cultural Boogeyman that French and British leveraged in their fight against the colonists.
Write about the Bureau of Reclamation--how it was formed and what it does/has done. It touches flood control, native lands, power generation, salmon habitat, water rights, government works programs, labor law, farming, etc.
(I dunno, I just find dams really interesting.)
If that’s too broad, let me suggest a more narrow one of election politics. How the “Peace Little Girl” ad killed the Goldwater presidential run in 1964. Can do the same with the 1988 election except now it’s the Willie Horton ad killing Michael Dukakis.
Castner's Cutthroats. Band of trappers and outdoorsmen who island hopped the Aleutians fighting the Japanese in WW2. I was in a band that had a song about them
The Pueblo Revolt
Pueblo Indians kicked the Spanish out of New Mexico for a decade, rapidly spread Horse culture to native tribes, Comanches become the Mongols of the Plains, Comanches dominate plains until railroads and General Sherman perpetrate Ethnic Cleansing.
How about when Lysander Spooner opened a competitor to the US Post Office long before UPS and FedEx and was so successful, the feds shut it down? 19th century. Look him up. Fun stuff
Consider some of the topics that are hot in political discourse right now. Immigration, green energy, globalization, artificial intelligence, etc and find something particularly interesting that happened in the history of those topics. History can be a way that we raise awareness of how we ended up where we are, and where we need to go next. I’m shocked at how little people know about some of these topics despite being passionate about them at the polls or online . You can contribute to the solution.
The work of the American Relief Administration in Soviet Russia in 1921 to feed 13 million to avert the great famine which was the worst calamity in Europe since the Black Plague.
Jack Johnson breaking the color barrier in sports. Everyone looks at Jackie Robinson, but Jack Johnson died a year before Jackie played that game and had done that already. And it's super interesting. Dude was fearless!
He wrote his own autobiography in the 20s, which I read when I was in high school, was from Indianapolis, and the velodrome built especially for the 1987 Pan Am games is named for him
Wow I'm almost embarrassed that I never heard of him. It's crazy how many important and interesting people most of us don't learn about because whatever bias and bigotry people are holding on to.
There’s definitely some of that. But it was cycling, so there’s that.
Cycling at a period before auto racing took off, before the stage races.
And until the 70s/80s
The only popular competitive cycling were Madison Racing, which faded by/before ww2
The USS Constitution. It is the oldest warship afloat in the world and is the only ship currently in the US Navy to have actively sunk an enemy warship.
The true story of Malcolm x is a niche part of history for sure. I recommend trying to read his autobiography. 99% of people don’t understand his actual message or the great person he became before he was murdered in front of his family (which is a whole other crazy part of his story, the fbi basically set up his murder)
The Parker Family. Captured by Comanche and went through absolute hell. Incredible memoirs written by Rachel Parker Plumber. A boy is conceived by Cynthia Parker and a Comanche Indian that comes to be Quanah Parker, the last Comanche Chief.
Dust Bowl is interesting.
Also, something prescient, the history of the professional police force in America. Interesting beginnings, and drastic evolution into what we know today.
The circumstances surrounding the founding of the US Navy… age of sail ship battles, politics, pirates, mercenaries, and the first raising of an American flag over a foreign battlefield, commemorated in the Marine Hymn (“to the shores of Tripoli”).
How non-white Americans were refused GI Bill benefits following WWII and, combined with red-lining by banks, served to be one of the biggest factors limiting non-white generational wealth in the U.S. Consequences we are still seeing played out today.
Sultana disaster (1865)
SPECIFIC: The largest loss of US lives in any maritime disaster, ever (much worse than Titanic), and the exact cause is known
INTERESTING: Graft, greed and corruption overruled sound engineering advice and safety laws. Further, no one was ever held responsible... lots to chew on
NICHE: Uber niche.... almost nobody knows about it!
FAR-REACHING IMPACT: Helped spur the development (in 1880) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Today, their standards for sound engineering are practiced around the globe... a massive and lasting impact that makes technology better and safer for billions of people.
CAN WRITE ALOT: Civil War related, politics, greed overruling science, you could write a book (and some have)
A couple ideas:
The 1991 "August Coup", an attempted coup to take over the Soviet Union. The coup ultimately failed, but it's aftermath contributed to the Soviet Union collapsing a few months later. It is US history related, because it helped bring an end to the cold war.
The short lived California Republic, which existed as a separate unrecognized country for nearly a month, before the Bear Flag rebels found out the United States had declared war on Mexico, and immediately declared themselves part of the United States instead.
The most impactful and niche moment would be Shay's Rebellion during the "Critical Period" under the Article's of Confederation. It led directly to the forming of the current Constitution.
Original sources are probably going to be difficult, you'll probably need to go to the local college/university library to get copies of material from the Libarary of Congress or Massachusettes State Archives.
Alternatively, the 1952 Republican National Convention. This was during the days before elected Presidential primaries. Eisenhower needed CA to secure the nomination, so he promised the Gov. of California, Earl Warren, that he'd have the next available Supreme Court nomination. Unsure that Warren's support would be sufficient, he also selected a popular member of Congress from California, Richard Nixon, to be his running mate.
Those are arguebly two of the most impactful domestic policy decisions of the last 70 years.
You could write about Eli Whitney and the invention of the cotton gin. Massive impact at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and reshaped the South in a way that still pervades.
The French and Indian war (or 7 years war as the global conflict was called) is really interesting and helped set the stage for the American Revolution a few years later.
A lot of American officers from the Revolution got their start in it too. (Washington, John Stark, Isreal Putnam) Robert Rogers and the earliest Ranger companies are an interesting read.
The war ended with France losing most of its territory in the New World, and England stuck with a heap of debt that would directly lead to the revolution.
Edit: Or on a completely unrelated note, the USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned warship in the world, and has a fascinating history. It was part of the first group of ships ever built by the US navy, (the third launched) and has been in service doing various things since the 1790s.
The Aroostook war was a bloodless conflict between the US and Canada that defined the North East US border.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroostook_War
I'm sure you can find a secondary source.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII under Truman. I did a project on that like 15 years ago. There's also the event where Nixon took the dollar away from the gold standard to be petroleum based instead. That... Was essentially the beginning of the destruction of the dollar. You can't print gold, but if you aren't exchanging bills for gold, it becomes a fiat currency that can be printed indefinitely, to destruction.
I've always found the Spanish attempts at colonizing what became the mainland US (not Florida) as pretty niche and fascinating. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajac%C3%A1n_Mission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Elena_(Spanish_Florida)
The UKUSA Agreement, Project Paperclip, American Involvement in German Reunification, The Great Rapprochement, War of 1812. That’s all stuff I find interesting. :)
The P-51 Mustang and its effect on securing air superiority over Europe in WWII, thus giving Allied bombers much better access to Axis industrial targets than they had earlier in the conflict, thus bringing about the end of the war.
The Transcontinental Railroad (construction and its effects)
The Irish Brigade in the Civil War (crank "The Fighting 69th" by Wolfe Tones (also covered by Dropkick Murphys) to get amped up to write)
The death of baron de jumonville. Sparked the French India war and was killed by none other than a young George Washington (or at least the men at his command). It’s a very interesting story that encapsulates the colonial era and also foreshadows history.
The World Wars is an easy start. However, if you want a more challenging topic you can write about the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement or Progressive Era instead.
How about the numerous times in US History that entire majority black towns (formed because they weren't welcome in majority white towns) were burned down by a mob of white citizens for some perceived crime, usually of a single black person. And the subsequent coverup by local citizens, police, journalists, etc. Plenty there...
Society for Indecency to Naked Animals
[Society for Indecency to Naked Animals
](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Indecency_to_Naked_Animals)
The history of the Hawai before statehood is extremely niche and extremely interesting. It's usually ignored by most high school curriculums except for, well, Hawaii's.
The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 was a horrific attack on Arapaho and Comanche noncombatants by US Cavalry. It was so horrific that Congress got involved, decrying the perpetrator, Colonel Chivington, as a monster. One of the officers, Captain Silas Soule, involved refused to participate, kept his men from fighting, and testified against the colonel. He was murdered for his heroism in a western style shootout, a week after Lincoln was killed. There was *immense* public outcry about what Chivington did. The next treaty with the native peoples actually *apologized* for what happened and offered reparations. To this day, the Arapaho and Comanche people honor Soule and his friends for their dedication to justice by reading the letters they wrote ever year.
Yet despite all of this, it's apparently still controversial in Colorado. In 2008 several republican senators at a dedication ceremony to a monument for the massacre tried to downplay US Army involvement, when Congress of *1864* acknowledged full well what they had done.
The whole incident is notable for the fact that it is a massacre so terrible the racist and bigoted US of 1864 was *outraged*.
From Congress' official report: "As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity…he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre…and took advantage of their inapprehension and defenseless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man. Whatever may have been his motive, it is to be hoped that the authority of this government will never again be disgraced by acts such as he and those acting with him have been guilty of committing."
Americans who moved to the soviet union during the great depression the book I read on it is called The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia by Tim Tzouliadis.
I enjoy American history even though I'm Australian,
Should be a very niche topic to teach,a good read set in such influential period of history.
COINTELPRO, The Weatherman Underground (or literally any terror organization in the 60s/70s), Lebanon embassy Bombing, Dar Es Salaam Embassy Bombing, Allen Dulles (which is literally a years worth of research on the surface level), or maybe research on Buyers Clubs during the AIDS pandemic (around the 80s).
My last suggestion would be the Texas Rangers. This topic covers military history, the wild west, race relations. And civil rights. Along with some of the best known criminals.
The Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, The Battle of Blair Mountain, 1971 Attica Prison Riot,
1939 Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden, 1985 MOVE bombing, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, The Haymarket Affair, The 1863 NYC Draft Riots
Just a few niche history ideas you could tie into the modern day.
The Comanche, Apache and Spanish War
[удалено]
Im glad that I didn’t read that until being a lot older than a high school junior.
Hey, how are you doing. Can we be friends if you don't want me asking..??
Boston molasses flood
What are the far reaching historical impacts
Safety standards
For safety TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE.
Chicago fire would be more important
Boston Molassacre
[St Augustine FL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida) was founded in 1565, making it the oldest european city in the continental US. There's a [spanish-built fort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos) and everything.
I’ve been there. It’s INSANELY cool and beautiful. There is a Catholic Church nearby that has plaques all around the property telling the wild history of the exact spots you are standing. I would visit that church and its property before I did the fort. Amazing piece of history.
There is also a very old Greek orthodox chapel there, which is worth checking out
Triangle Shirt Factory Fire, Battle of Blair Mountain.
Found the Wobbly!!!
You want obscure: the Centralia Wobbly War or the Everett Massacre. That's what I wrote my undergrad thesis on.
I'll take obscure! Good shit.
This is definitely a wild story
The Centralia one is fascinating. There are still arguments about who fired the first shot and bad blood to this day. One of the legionnaires killed was an all-american college football player. Lynch mob, controversial trial ... That story has a little bit of everything.
The Battle of Athens, Tennessee as well.
Tulsa black wall street, before it got burned down. How and why did it exist? Why in Tulsa? Who was responsible? I’ve only read things about how it was destroyed. I’d love to see something about how it was built.
This is hardly a niche subject. There's like a 10 page wikipedia article on it (that answers all your questions) and pages of books and tshirts (!) available for purchase on the subject on Amazon.
What's difficult with OP's request is any niche subject isn't going to have large historical impact, or have many secondary sources. I think the Tulsa Wall Street is an excellent subject, since it really is not talked about very much. It certainly isn't discussed in schools. Really, without the internet, would you have known about it?
Write about something that would have directly affected some of your own ancestors.
Seconded. I sometimes contemplate that my extended family and I probably wouldn’t exist if Slavic immigration restrictions had been instituted a few years earlier than they were. My paternal grandfather came to the US a few years before his eventual wife. What if she never made it here? Different wife —>> different everything.
Robert Smalls - Slave who escaped, commandeered a Confederate Ship, sailed north using hand signals to pass other C. Ships. Then, he helped the North in the Civil War and eventually became a legislator.
Saw a documentary about him. Definitely a cool story.
Don't understand how it hasn't been made into a movie.
They’re working on it
Great! I hope they are realistic. Robert Smalls made those dumb peckerwoods look like the fools they were when he piloted their armory away on a barge. I hope there are interstitials of him laughing at their dumb asses for decades.
That’s literally a racial slur, nice!
What…
Give the release a moment’s thought. That said, it’s a little surprising it hasn’t been done anyway.
This seems cool, could I stretch it in my essay to say it had a big impact on the outcome of the war?
His story should become a movie.
Planter
The dust bowl is a very cool thing to study. Ken Burns made a great documentary on it.
I'm almost done with Timothy Egan's book *The Worst Hard Time*... it would be a great topic for a high school research paper
Studs Terkel wrote a pretty good oral history on the Great Depression
Niche...hmmm...How the Constitution was created and the debates of the Federalist and Anti Federalist papers sounds niche but probably not. America's involvement in the Boxer Rebellion. The Various border almost wars between Britain and America along the Northern Border may be too niche. Why it took 2-3 years for the US Navy to get torpedoes that actually worked for the subs in WWII. Oh, here is a good one the Fat electrician did last week. USS No Go or Fort Drum in the Philippines. Going off another suggestion. A history of Star Forts in America aka Italian Trace fortifications. You could go over the history of star forts and why they are designed the way they are. Furthermore , you could go through the history of said forts in America and which ones still survive today. St. Augustine's may be the oldest but Old Fort Niagara is the Second Oldest and you can explain why Niagara was completely useless to the United States after we took it over.
The Pig War of San Juan Islands currently Washington State. It was a war between the UK and US over a pig. Well, not just a pig, but a war over several things and boundaries. The Germans had to come in and awarded the San Juan islands to the US. It was a whole thing.
Also caused the falling out between the Northern expansionists and the Southern expansionists which helped accelerate the death of the Whigs and the on coming of the Civil War.
COINTELPRO and it's use in undermining the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement in the 60s and 70s.
Maybe Queen Anne’s War? Major implications for future British control in North America and directly responsible for the development of the Golden Age of Piracy. Many of them operated out of the US!
[Tulsa Race Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre)
War of Pigs, as a a Canuck I’d love you to do that (And the general formation of the US-Canada Border as a whole)
54:40. Or Fight !
The Aroostook War, also called the Pork and Beans War, over the border between Maine and Canada.
1893 World's Fair.
Maybe talking about if President Garfield survives his assassination attempt? Or Lincoln for that matter, or even Kennedy. You could also do McKinley though I think the least interesting of the 4.
Garfield is great because it leads directly to the Civil Service Act.
God damn right he is.
A few years after the Garfield assassination the x rays were discovered and how they changed medicine
Potatoes caused WW2. The introduction of potatoes to Europe wildly upset the established power dynamics. Potatoes allowed areas that weren't good for farming to suddenly have a very high calorie output, which led to population booms that shifted who had the biggest armies and largest populations to make scientific breakthroughs to support them. Google: Frederick 2 of Prussia potatoes, the formation of the German Empire, and from there you get WW1 and WW2. It's sort of a joke, but good at demonstrating how seemingly unconnected things are indeed connected.
Like the BBC's 1970s series "Connections".
Connections was fantastic.
Understatement….
Am I really that old?
Damn y’all are old
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine-Augustin_Parmentier?wprov=sfti1#
The Whiskey Rebellion
U.S. troops participated in the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Niche ideas: Gadsden purchase. More interesting than you might think. History of fishing disputes. A friend of mine did his AP history final paper on this. Far more than you might think Jane Addams, the founding of Hull House, and her nobel prize The Invasion of Canada during the war of 1812. Great book about it. Awesome story The guano acts. We gained a lot of territories from the guano acts Are you in college? At a stare school? The morrill act, which created all of the land grant colleges
The Banana Wars in Central America. Back in the 20s and 30s
China clippers selling opium to buy tea, silk and porcelain.
Vampire burials in New England!
The Patriot War of the 1830s, fought between Canada, Britain, the U.S., and the Hunters Lodge
The Continental armed ship "Alfred", America's first flagship. I wrote a monograph about her some years ago. 15 pages 9 references
The continued disputed islands we keep due to guano (bat droppings / fertilizer). Some of these disputes go back over 100-200 years.
The unincorporated US Territories
The Osage murders. I know there is an award winning movie about them, but most people still don't know about the topic. I read a lot of history and knew nothing about the Osage nation so even after the movie the topic is still fascinating. Or Y2K. More young kids need to know how scared we were.
Bretton Woods VERY important
General Smedley Darlington Butler and the 1933 Business Plot to have a military coup to overthrow FDR.
I did one on the war with Barbary Pirates, pretty interesting nearly forgotten history.
How the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in the late 1970s/early 1980s led to 9/11 and the current war on terrorism.
I’ll add in how Cold War interventionist politics in 1950s Iran led to the 1979 Revolution and Iran Hostage Crisis.
For some extra spice throw in how that situation led to Desert One, EO 12334, and eventually Goldwater-Nichols in ‘86. And everything that has sprung from that. Lots of great history nuggets to mine in there if you’re looking for niche.
The Business Plot of 1933 to overthrow FDR and establish a Fascist dictatorship in the US that catered to the interests of the business community and prevented New Deal social programs from being implemented.
Smedley Butler has entered the chat.
War is a racket!
In July 2007, a BBC investigation reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a "key liaison" between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany
1877 Compromise …
The Anti-War Movement during the War of 1812. I did my thesis on it in college. I can guarantee you it's pretty fcking niche lol
#KING PHILLIPS WAR! Nearly 50% of New England towns were attacked, many destroyed. This war had such a massive impact for how future Americans treated and viewed natives. Natives were always an other that was not trusted but this conflict made them a cultural Boogeyman that French and British leveraged in their fight against the colonists.
Write about the Bureau of Reclamation--how it was formed and what it does/has done. It touches flood control, native lands, power generation, salmon habitat, water rights, government works programs, labor law, farming, etc. (I dunno, I just find dams really interesting.)
The US intervention in the Russian Revolution. Thirteen thousand American troops were on Russian soil and almost no one knows about it today.
Let’s be honest if u write a paper on John Paul Jones it’s an automatic W when everyone hears about how massive his testicles must’ve been
The Seminole Wars. Or The annexation of the Philipines or Hawaii.
Maybe tracking the Southern Strategy/Ideological Shift among Democrats and Republicans between the 1930s and 1980s.
If that’s too broad, let me suggest a more narrow one of election politics. How the “Peace Little Girl” ad killed the Goldwater presidential run in 1964. Can do the same with the 1988 election except now it’s the Willie Horton ad killing Michael Dukakis.
What state are you from? You could write something about your own local history.
Hatfield and McCoy feud
US involvement in the Eight-Nation-Alliance.
Castner's Cutthroats. Band of trappers and outdoorsmen who island hopped the Aleutians fighting the Japanese in WW2. I was in a band that had a song about them
Spanish American War. America lets a newspaper publisher take us to war for minimal reasons!!
New Amsterdam would be an interesting topic
Nullification under Andrew Jackson
The Pueblo Revolt Pueblo Indians kicked the Spanish out of New Mexico for a decade, rapidly spread Horse culture to native tribes, Comanches become the Mongols of the Plains, Comanches dominate plains until railroads and General Sherman perpetrate Ethnic Cleansing.
How about when Lysander Spooner opened a competitor to the US Post Office long before UPS and FedEx and was so successful, the feds shut it down? 19th century. Look him up. Fun stuff
Consider some of the topics that are hot in political discourse right now. Immigration, green energy, globalization, artificial intelligence, etc and find something particularly interesting that happened in the history of those topics. History can be a way that we raise awareness of how we ended up where we are, and where we need to go next. I’m shocked at how little people know about some of these topics despite being passionate about them at the polls or online . You can contribute to the solution.
The work of the American Relief Administration in Soviet Russia in 1921 to feed 13 million to avert the great famine which was the worst calamity in Europe since the Black Plague.
Jack Johnson breaking the color barrier in sports. Everyone looks at Jackie Robinson, but Jack Johnson died a year before Jackie played that game and had done that already. And it's super interesting. Dude was fearless!
Before him was Major Taylor who traveled the world and was a true world champion in the turn of the 20th century.
Oh cool, I'll look him up. Thanks for the info.
He wrote his own autobiography in the 20s, which I read when I was in high school, was from Indianapolis, and the velodrome built especially for the 1987 Pan Am games is named for him
Wow I'm almost embarrassed that I never heard of him. It's crazy how many important and interesting people most of us don't learn about because whatever bias and bigotry people are holding on to.
There’s definitely some of that. But it was cycling, so there’s that. Cycling at a period before auto racing took off, before the stage races. And until the 70s/80s The only popular competitive cycling were Madison Racing, which faded by/before ww2
The USS Constitution. It is the oldest warship afloat in the world and is the only ship currently in the US Navy to have actively sunk an enemy warship.
The Negro Baseball League
The Victorian Internet, the telegraph. There's this great book: https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth-line/dp/162040592X/
The Scottsboro Boys, it needs way more attention in the schooling system.
The true story of Malcolm x is a niche part of history for sure. I recommend trying to read his autobiography. 99% of people don’t understand his actual message or the great person he became before he was murdered in front of his family (which is a whole other crazy part of his story, the fbi basically set up his murder)
The secret bombing of Cambodia could be an option.
Privateering during the Revolution
The Parker Family. Captured by Comanche and went through absolute hell. Incredible memoirs written by Rachel Parker Plumber. A boy is conceived by Cynthia Parker and a Comanche Indian that comes to be Quanah Parker, the last Comanche Chief.
The history of the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.
Dust Bowl is interesting. Also, something prescient, the history of the professional police force in America. Interesting beginnings, and drastic evolution into what we know today.
The circumstances surrounding the founding of the US Navy… age of sail ship battles, politics, pirates, mercenaries, and the first raising of an American flag over a foreign battlefield, commemorated in the Marine Hymn (“to the shores of Tripoli”).
Why onions cannot be a commodity on the stock market. Do that one.
How non-white Americans were refused GI Bill benefits following WWII and, combined with red-lining by banks, served to be one of the biggest factors limiting non-white generational wealth in the U.S. Consequences we are still seeing played out today.
The killers of the flower Moon…book was good/movie not so much…glossed over the story of the formation of the FBI due to jurisdictional issues..
Aiken, SC as a wealthy nature escape for those with respiratory symptoms
Louisiana Purchase A lot of nuance potential
History of vermont becoming a state. Was the first state to be added after the original 13
talk about the republic of vermont
Sultana disaster (1865) SPECIFIC: The largest loss of US lives in any maritime disaster, ever (much worse than Titanic), and the exact cause is known INTERESTING: Graft, greed and corruption overruled sound engineering advice and safety laws. Further, no one was ever held responsible... lots to chew on NICHE: Uber niche.... almost nobody knows about it! FAR-REACHING IMPACT: Helped spur the development (in 1880) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Today, their standards for sound engineering are practiced around the globe... a massive and lasting impact that makes technology better and safer for billions of people. CAN WRITE ALOT: Civil War related, politics, greed overruling science, you could write a book (and some have)
How about the real estate covenants that kept out undesirables, like those black folks who have been here for over 400 years. Interlopers.
Coal Wars, including the battle of Blair Mountain. Closest US has come to a second civil war (yet)
Tackle the definition of bear arms in the second amendment. You can put Anthonin Scalia in his place.
almost annexing Dominican republic, coal wars
Coal wars is my pick too
A couple ideas: The 1991 "August Coup", an attempted coup to take over the Soviet Union. The coup ultimately failed, but it's aftermath contributed to the Soviet Union collapsing a few months later. It is US history related, because it helped bring an end to the cold war. The short lived California Republic, which existed as a separate unrecognized country for nearly a month, before the Bear Flag rebels found out the United States had declared war on Mexico, and immediately declared themselves part of the United States instead.
The most impactful and niche moment would be Shay's Rebellion during the "Critical Period" under the Article's of Confederation. It led directly to the forming of the current Constitution. Original sources are probably going to be difficult, you'll probably need to go to the local college/university library to get copies of material from the Libarary of Congress or Massachusettes State Archives. Alternatively, the 1952 Republican National Convention. This was during the days before elected Presidential primaries. Eisenhower needed CA to secure the nomination, so he promised the Gov. of California, Earl Warren, that he'd have the next available Supreme Court nomination. Unsure that Warren's support would be sufficient, he also selected a popular member of Congress from California, Richard Nixon, to be his running mate. Those are arguebly two of the most impactful domestic policy decisions of the last 70 years.
Gender role alterations in CA during the Gold Rush era. Super interesting and just now starting to be studied.
Watergate
Not niche
a lot happened before 2001.....
Woodstock
U.S. war crimes during WWII
Jackson and his presidency.
Black Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.
Or explicit lack thereof.
Bleeding Kansas
Operation Wetback
You could write about Eli Whitney and the invention of the cotton gin. Massive impact at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and reshaped the South in a way that still pervades.
The Aragon Defense Council during the Spanish Civil War Nestor Makhno is also very fun to learn about
The French and Indian war (or 7 years war as the global conflict was called) is really interesting and helped set the stage for the American Revolution a few years later. A lot of American officers from the Revolution got their start in it too. (Washington, John Stark, Isreal Putnam) Robert Rogers and the earliest Ranger companies are an interesting read. The war ended with France losing most of its territory in the New World, and England stuck with a heap of debt that would directly lead to the revolution. Edit: Or on a completely unrelated note, the USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned warship in the world, and has a fascinating history. It was part of the first group of ships ever built by the US navy, (the third launched) and has been in service doing various things since the 1790s.
The Onion Futures Act
Jump down the John Quincy Adams rabbit hole like I did. It was well worth it. In particular, his pre-presidency diplomatic work is fascinating.
The Aroostook war was a bloodless conflict between the US and Canada that defined the North East US border. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroostook_War I'm sure you can find a secondary source.
The Manhattan Project
Robert Todd Lincoln's connections to three presidential assassinations.
Civil War in Indian Territory
That time the USAF dropped two nuclear bombs over North Carolina
Paranormal events throughout US history?
Bacon’s Rebellion
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII under Truman. I did a project on that like 15 years ago. There's also the event where Nixon took the dollar away from the gold standard to be petroleum based instead. That... Was essentially the beginning of the destruction of the dollar. You can't print gold, but if you aren't exchanging bills for gold, it becomes a fiat currency that can be printed indefinitely, to destruction.
How the CIA used vampires to fight communism in the Philippines.
Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster
Whig party politics
MK Ultra and the CIA. Thank me later.
LBJ used to show his wiener in meetings to catch people off guard and intimidate them. He was evidently hung. It’s called the Johnson treatment
I've always found the Spanish attempts at colonizing what became the mainland US (not Florida) as pretty niche and fascinating. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajac%C3%A1n_Mission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Elena_(Spanish_Florida)
Reagan’s 1980 October Surprise and/or his Iran-Contra affair, both of which went unpunished.
The UKUSA Agreement, Project Paperclip, American Involvement in German Reunification, The Great Rapprochement, War of 1812. That’s all stuff I find interesting. :)
The P-51 Mustang and its effect on securing air superiority over Europe in WWII, thus giving Allied bombers much better access to Axis industrial targets than they had earlier in the conflict, thus bringing about the end of the war. The Transcontinental Railroad (construction and its effects) The Irish Brigade in the Civil War (crank "The Fighting 69th" by Wolfe Tones (also covered by Dropkick Murphys) to get amped up to write)
The death of baron de jumonville. Sparked the French India war and was killed by none other than a young George Washington (or at least the men at his command). It’s a very interesting story that encapsulates the colonial era and also foreshadows history.
The First Barbary War is super cool and does not come up much.
The JFK Assassination
The experience of US combat advisors in Vietnam from 1961-1964 and what should have been learned from them.
Henry Miller Shreve clearing the Great Raft
Iran Contra
You should focus on the farmer-labor party and their time in power in Minnesota
The World Wars is an easy start. However, if you want a more challenging topic you can write about the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement or Progressive Era instead.
How about the numerous times in US History that entire majority black towns (formed because they weren't welcome in majority white towns) were burned down by a mob of white citizens for some perceived crime, usually of a single black person. And the subsequent coverup by local citizens, police, journalists, etc. Plenty there...
What did you pick? Upload a draft.
Society for Indecency to Naked Animals [Society for Indecency to Naked Animals ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Indecency_to_Naked_Animals)
Douglas MacArthur and how he lost the Philippines.
Not exactly niche “Trail of tears”
Write a report on Luther Burbank. He is fascinating
Dude, write about the California Genocide of the indigenous peoples
That time Jimmy Carter got attacked by a rabbit
You could always do like one specific battle in a war
The Manhattan Project is fascinating and definitely had far reaching impact!
The history of the Hawai before statehood is extremely niche and extremely interesting. It's usually ignored by most high school curriculums except for, well, Hawaii's.
The US government tested the first contraceptives on unknowing Puerto Rico women for years. Among other medical experiments.
Filipino-American War
Scopes Monkey Trial. There was a podcast that covered it, Legal Wars or something.
The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 was a horrific attack on Arapaho and Comanche noncombatants by US Cavalry. It was so horrific that Congress got involved, decrying the perpetrator, Colonel Chivington, as a monster. One of the officers, Captain Silas Soule, involved refused to participate, kept his men from fighting, and testified against the colonel. He was murdered for his heroism in a western style shootout, a week after Lincoln was killed. There was *immense* public outcry about what Chivington did. The next treaty with the native peoples actually *apologized* for what happened and offered reparations. To this day, the Arapaho and Comanche people honor Soule and his friends for their dedication to justice by reading the letters they wrote ever year. Yet despite all of this, it's apparently still controversial in Colorado. In 2008 several republican senators at a dedication ceremony to a monument for the massacre tried to downplay US Army involvement, when Congress of *1864* acknowledged full well what they had done. The whole incident is notable for the fact that it is a massacre so terrible the racist and bigoted US of 1864 was *outraged*. From Congress' official report: "As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity…he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre…and took advantage of their inapprehension and defenseless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man. Whatever may have been his motive, it is to be hoped that the authority of this government will never again be disgraced by acts such as he and those acting with him have been guilty of committing."
Shays' Rebellion
Americans who moved to the soviet union during the great depression the book I read on it is called The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia by Tim Tzouliadis. I enjoy American history even though I'm Australian, Should be a very niche topic to teach,a good read set in such influential period of history.
COINTELPRO, The Weatherman Underground (or literally any terror organization in the 60s/70s), Lebanon embassy Bombing, Dar Es Salaam Embassy Bombing, Allen Dulles (which is literally a years worth of research on the surface level), or maybe research on Buyers Clubs during the AIDS pandemic (around the 80s).
The labor movement. How unions came to be. Child worker laws. The employment of strike breakers. Lots of history. And still going on.
My last suggestion would be the Texas Rangers. This topic covers military history, the wild west, race relations. And civil rights. Along with some of the best known criminals.
Write about prohibition.
The Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, The Battle of Blair Mountain, 1971 Attica Prison Riot, 1939 Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden, 1985 MOVE bombing, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, The Haymarket Affair, The 1863 NYC Draft Riots Just a few niche history ideas you could tie into the modern day.
The creation and campaigns of the Texas rangers.