By William H. Wroth With the establishment of the Republic of Texas in 1836 Sam Houston was elected as its first president. As president, Houston unsuccessfully advocated the annexation of Texas to the United States. He also sought to avoid further conflicts with the Republic of Mexico, quelling some…
By William H. Wroth José Rafael Aragón (ca.1783-90 – 1862) was one of the most prolific and popular santeros in nineteenth-century New Mexico. Santeros are makers of images of saints, known in New Mexico as santos. The Spanish term santero has several meanings, the primary one being a person…
By Samuel Sisneros Twelve years after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, half of the refugees in El Paso del Norte returned to northern New Mexico. Those who stayed either remained in the refugee colonies or migrated further into Chihuahua and established new communities along the Camino Real. They opened and…
By Samuel Sisneros In 1849, following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, more than 150 families from central and southern Texas, a small group from California, close to 4,000 people from New Mexico, along with approximately seven hundred people from the present El Paso Lower Valley (Socorro, Ysleta and San…
By Suzanne Stamatov The Japanese siege on the American forces in the Philippines transpired over a four-month period. Japan began aerial attacks on the Philippines on the same day it attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii (8 December in the Philippines as it is across the International Date Line). Ordered…
By Suzanne Stamatov As General Krueger pursued the fleeing enemy to the north, one of his officers approached him and informed him that the Cabanatuan prison stood in his path. That officer had spoken to an American guerilla leader named Robert Lapham. Lapham said that, once the Japanese believed…
On Saturday, January 6, 1912, at 1:35 p.m. in Washington D.C., President William H. Taft signs the proclamation making New Mexico the 47th state of the United States of America. More than 61 years had passed since the first statehood convention had been held in New Mexico on June…
On the Feast of the Ascension, April 30, 1598, Juan de Oñate took possession with the following excerped words: In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, and the undivided Eternal Unity, Deity and Majesty, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, three persons in one sole essence, and one and…
By Michael Ann Sullivan Sandia National Laboratory was originally the engineering division (called Z-division) of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the central laboratory of the top-secret Manhattan Project during WWII. The Manhattan Project scientists developed an atomic bomb which was deployed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on…
By Michael Ann Sullivan On 16 July 1945 the U.S. Army and civilian scientists attached to the Manhattan Engineering District detonated the first atomic device in the New Mexico desert at Trinity Site, a remote location sixty miles northwest of Alamogordo. At 5:30 am in the morning a brilliant…
