History   

In this 250th anniversary year of our nation, let us see how Americans celebrated the 50th in 1826, the 100th in 1876, the 150th in 1926, and the 200th—an anniversary many of us lived through. This will be a fun romp through American history.

America’s Chernobyl details the controversies, decision making, and actions that led to the fourth and fifth atomic detonations at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in August 1946. The nation’s leaders did not understand the power that they possessed. In testing these devices, they unleashed a nuclear catastrophe that had a disastrous effect on thousands of US Navy personnel. This course presents a cautionary tale about the consequences of government and scientific arrogance that we can view from the distance of eighty years.

Was Sir Francis Drake the first European to arrive in northern California in 1579 during his circumnavigation of the globe? What happened to over 100 colonists who disappeared from Roanoke Island in North Carolina in 1590? Why did almost 100 colonists starve to death at Jamestown during their first winter in 1608? What caused the hysteria that led to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692? These questions will be addressed with a variety of evidence from the past as well as modern scientific and archeological evidence that may reveal some answers to these enduring questions.

The Colonial Period ended with the conflagrations of the brutal Civil War of the American Revolution. At first only a small minority of colonists supported independence, but with the burning of their cities more and more citizens embraced the rebel cause. 

Meet J. Parker Whitney, who was 17 when he arrived in San Francisco in 1852 with 10 cents in his pocket. For 20 years he explored the U.S., trying his hand at various business ventures, eventually returning to Rocklin where he developed an estate that covered nearly 29 square miles.