Edwin Porter's 1903 adaptation of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was one of the earliest American full-length narrative films.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' published in 1852, was the second best-selling book of the 19th century, after the Bible.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential antislavery novel, was originally released as 41 weekly newspaper installments.

Thomas Edison captured the only known footage of Mark Twain

The inventor was a pioneer in the early film industry and made his own motion pictures. In 1909, he shot a short film featuring Twain at Stormfield, his property in Connecticut. In it, Twain wears his iconic white suit and drinks tea with his daughters.

Thomas Edison inadvertently spurred the film industry's move to Hollywood

The inventor's patent on the motion picture camera included several stipulations that required independent movie studios to work with Edison's Motion Picture Patents Co., making the East Coast undesirable for aspiring filmmakers.

Dickens' live readings sometimes used visual projectors that predated cinema

Dickens was interested in adapting his work in various forms. With his live readings, he sometimes used a 'magical lantern,' a popular tool that projected moving slides. In addition, some stage plays of Dickens' work that included ghost scenes used the magical lantern to cast apparitions on stage.

Silent film star Buster Keaton tried to turn the Civil War into a comedy with the 1926 film 'The General,' which was panned by critics for its pro-Confederate themes and tone-deaf treatment of war.

'The Jazz Singer,' the first film with synchronized sound, changed Hollywood

Movies changed forever in 1927, when Warner Bros. released "The Jazz Singer," the first feature film with integrated dialogue. Based on a Broadway musical, the movie starred Al Jolson as the son of a Jewish cantor who wants to be a popular singer.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1896 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered special effects.

The abolitionist movement long predated the Civil War

Beginning in the late 18th century, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth campaigned through newspapers, lectures, and political action to end slavery.

Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' blended slapstick and satire

The 1936 film thrust Chaplin's iconic Little Tramp character into the Industrial Revolution, satirizing how mass production was dehumanizing individuals. The movie was not only a hit, but it was also the product of a burgeoning Hollywood: Chaplin had founded his own company (United Artists) in 1919.

Watch Walt Disney's early innovative film, 'Alice's Wonderland,' which innovated the use of animated characters in the real world.

The earliest known country recording is a 1891 wax cylinder of Louis Vasnier's 'Thompson's Old Gray Mule' that was discovered by accident over a century later.

'Shuffle Along,' a 1921 Broadway musical, brought jazz to American musical theater and helped pave the way for Black culture in the 20th century.

Zora Neale Hurston used her anthropological training to interview a man who had survived the slave trade

The writer's interviews with Cudjo Lewis documented the man's enslavement and travel from Africa to the United States. It also captured the story behind Africatown, a community in Alabama that emerged after the Emancipation Proclamation. Hurston's book was not published during her lifetime, though it was finally released in 2018 as "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.'"

'Steamboat Willie' was inspired by 'The Jazz Singer'

Walt Disney was mesmerized by Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer" and the way it used synchronized sound, which synced film with audio. He replicated that effect in “Steamboat Willie," producing the first animated film to do so.

The earliest known play performed in the US was 'The Recruiting Officer'

A London troupe performed a comedy called "The Recruiting Officer" in New York City in 1732.

Watch a 1934 short film starring Cab Calloway

Singer and bandleader Cab Calloway was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene. He was also one of the biggest names in jazz's swing era and would go on to be the first Black American to have a nationally syndicated radio show and the first to sell a million copies of a record. In this 1934 short film, "Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho," he reenacts his upbeat performances at Harlem's Cotton Club.

19th-century photographer William Mumler claimed he captured ghosts on film, producing images that stunned and bewildered the public.

Georges Méliès directed what many consider the first science fiction film

The French director was behind 1897's "Gugusse and the Automaton," a silent film that scholars believe features the first appearance of a robot in cinema and one of the earliest films to feature scientific experimentation.

Robert Smalls escaped slavery by piloting a stolen Confederate ship to freedom, then became an influential Black political leader during Reconstruction.

Slavery in the US: a timeline

In 1619, a ship with 20 captives landed at Point Comfort in Virginia, ushering in the era of American slavery. Scroll through this timeline to learn more about slavery in the US and its long lasting effects.

The story of Sweeney Todd was first told in 1800s penny dreadfuls

The demon barber of Fleet Street made his first print appearance between the pages of penny dreadfuls, cheaply made serials filled with grisly tales and sold for a single penny. The tale of Sweeney Todd was published in 18 parts over the course of 18 weeks between November 1846 and March 1847. The series was expanded into 92 parts and later gathered into a single volume published in 1850.

The 1939 film adaptation of 'The Wizard of Oz' reimagined L. Frank Baum's book 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' for a new age, using technological breakthroughs to depict Baum's fantastical text.

The best adaptations of Dickens' books

There have been over 300 screen adaptations of Dickens' works, including 50 of "A Christmas Carol" alone. This list breaks down the best of the bunch, with nods to the Gen X "Great Expectations," the musical rendition of "Oliver Twist," and Dev Patel's take on "David Copperfield."

Classic movies are prone to decomposition because they're captured on nitrate film

Nitrate film was the standard in early Hollywood and is prone to decomposition over time. It's led to an estimated 75% of early American films being lost to history.

See rare Civil War photographs preserved by the National Archives

The Civil War was the first major American conflict documented by a camera, with its images distributed widely to the public. The National Archives' digital collection offers thousands of original Civil War images: portraits, battlefields, hospitals, and everyday life.

A Hitchcock film has been adapted for a new demographic: smartphone users

Hitchcock's "The Lodger," a silent film from 1927, has been adapted for Tattle TV, a video app featuring "vertical microdramas" aimed at smartphone users looking for bite-sized stories.

'The Wizard of Oz' wasn't the first film to use Technicolor

Technicolor provided warm color to films. it was first used in 1917. But the 1939 film used Technicolor in such an intentional way—by having Dorothy exit a dull, sepia-toned world before entering the Technicolor Oz—it popularized the technology, even though audiences had likely seen it used before then.

With the help of one photographer who took photos of children at work, child labor in the US was eventually restricted by law in the mid-1900s.

Read passages from Truth's autobiography, dictated because she was illiterate

Because Truth was illiterate, her memoir was dictated to and written by Olive Gilbert. Published in 1850, "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth" recounts her life in slavery, escape to freedom, and religious awakening.

Nineteenth-century, hand-drawn infographics on US slavery and race

In the second half of the 19th century, researchers studying the behavior of the millions of emancipated Americans after the Civil War used "information graphics" to cut through the noise of racially charged debate. In this collection from Stanford, you can see century-old, stunningly hand-drawn data visualizations showing racial demographics, the effects of emancipation on cotton prices, and more.

Hear the story of the largest single escape attempt by enslaved people in American history

On April 15, 1848, 77 enslaved individuals in Washington, DC, boarded a ship named the Pearl in the largest single escape attempt in US history. Their capture led to riots and intensified the conflict over fugitive slave laws.

The Civil War introduced many technological advances to both society and warfare.

Hollywood's efficient response to the Spanish flu made it a filmmaking destination

In 1918, the Great Influenza epidemic killed more than 675,000 Americans. Los Angeles was one of the first cities to shut down movie theaters, most of which were independently owned and couldn’t afford the revenue loss. The results were twofold: the quick response meant that Hollywood could bounce back faster than other film hubs, and it also contributed to the rise of vertical integration as studios stepped in to purchase the flailing theaters.

Thomas Edison publicly executed animals with AC to convince the public of its dangers

J.P. Morgan first backed Thomas Edison's direct current system, seeing electricity's potential to usurp John D. Rockefeller's kerosene empire. Despite the investments and smear campaign against alternating current, alternating current ultimately won public support after lighting the 1893 World's Fair, after which Morgan would fund Tesla's wireless transmission tower.

'Huckleberry Finn' has a long history of book bans

Twain’s most famous novel was first banned in March 1885. Librarians in Concord, Massachusetts, called it “suitable only for the slums.” Since then, it’s been banned many more times, mostly because of how it deals with race. In recent decades, its use of the N-word, has led to its removal.

George Pullman popularized tipping in the US with his Pullman sleeping car business

By 1868, Pullman, who operated luxury sleeping cars on the country’s growing network of railways, had started hiring formerly enslaved Black men as porters for extremely meager wages, working long hours in poor conditions. He encouraged wealthy passengers to tip them, helping institutionalize tipping in the US.

How one silent movie came to define science fiction

Fritz Lang's 1927 epic "Metropolis" set the template for much of the science fiction that followed, establishing themes that would come to define the genre through films like "Star Wars" and novels like "Brave New World." This short documentary from DW digs into the history of the film and its long-lasting impact.

He made a name with a short story about jumping frogs

Twain’s first big break came with “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” a fictitious story that appeared in a 1865 edition of the New York Saturday Press. (When it was republished elsewhere, the title was changed to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”) That year, American poet James Russell Lowe called it “the finest piece of humorous literature yet produced in America.”

The 1925 ‘Wizard of Oz’ predates the classic 1939 film

The film differs significantly from the 1900 book and the later 1939 film adaptation: Dorothy is 18 years old, the Tin Woodman is a villain, and the entire story of Oz is framed by a toy-maker reading the original Baum book to his granddaughter.

What was life like as a slave in the US?

Over 2,500 former slaves were interviewed by writers and journalists in the late 1930s as part of the US Federal Writer's Project. The collection recorded images and firsthand verbal accounts of life as a slave, eight of which are highlighted in this article at the Library of Congress. See the humanity in each of these individuals with their firsthand accounts.

'A Christmas Carol' was originally going to be a political pamphlet

Dickens planned to write a treatise on the day's social issues and had a particularly dry working title: "An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man's Child." After a week, though, he decided to rework the ideas into a fictional story, working at a quick pace so it could be released in time for Christmas. It worked: The story was published on December 19, 1843.

A collective effort from multiple scientists and inventors led to the light bulb

While Thomas Edison's thin carbon filament design made light bulbs commercially viable, prior contributions, such as Joseph Swan's development of the first successful incandescent filament electric lamp, made its eventual invention possible.

'Show Boat' redefined the American musical

The 1927 musical—penned by Oscar Hammerstein II, who would go on to create, with Richard Rodgers, other titanic shows like "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel"—used its songs to advance the plot and build character rather than simply entertain.

The first nationally broadcast soap opera was 'Clara, Lu, 'n Em'

The show first aired in Chicago in 1930, but was then picked up by NBC and broadcast across the country in 1931. The show followed three women who lived in the same duplex. Listen to a 1934 episode below, including the preshow's soap-centric advertising.

Hear how the world reacted to the American Civil War

European nations closely watched the Civil War for its economic and political consequences. Some European nations quietly engaged diplomatically with the Confederacy but withheld recognition. When the Union made slavery's abolition a central cause, European public opinion turned sharply against the South.

The ‘Universal Monsters’ series solidified horror as a film genre

Before 1931, most scary movies were billed as “mystery” or “suspense” with grounded explanations for anything "supernatural." That changed with “Dracula,” which presented the character as a real vampire who drank victims' blood. Universal continued adapting similar titles, including HG Wells’ “The Invisible Man” and Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories.

The musical 'The Wizard of Oz' debuted in 1902

Following the success of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,’ Baum adapted the novel for the stage. It premiered at Chicago’s Grand Opera House in 1902 and made it to Broadway’s Majestic Theatre in 1903. It then toured the country through 1909. It was also a musical adaptation of the story.

Black women played a central but often overlooked role in the suffrage movement

Although the women's suffrage movement is often portrayed as a white story, Black women like Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell fought for voting rights—frequently facing racism within the movement itself.

Walt Whitman's lost novel

In 2016, a long-forgotten piece of Walt Whitman's earliest work was uncovered. First published anonymously in 1852, "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle" is a serialized story that predates "Leaves of Grass." It offers a rare look at Whitman's early writing, before he became one of the most influential poets in US history.