NATIONAL HISTORY DAY
2015 Sample Topics List
Leadership & Legacy in History
Politics & U.S. History
Theodore Roosevelt – Panama Canal
Thurgood Marshall – 1st Af. American Supreme Ct.
Justice
Thomas Jefferson – settling the American West
Franklin D. Roosevelt – New Deal, through the
Great Depression
Abraham Lincoln – Emancipation Proclamation…
Ronald Reagan – leading us out of the Cold War
Thomas Hobbes – modern political philosophy
George Washington
George Marshall – plan for WWII recovery
Richard Nixon – opening doors with China
Harry S. Truman – WWII into the
atomic age
*“Fighting Bob” La Follett – WI’s Progressive Age
Andrew Jackson – the People’s President
William Howard Taft – Dollar Diplomacy
Grover Cleveland – Pullman Strike of 1894
Lyndon B. Johnson – Voting Rights Act
Harry Truman – Truman Doctrine – Cold War
Tecumseh – fighting westward expansion
Bacon’s Rebellion – organizing the colonists
Land Ordinances – opening the West
*Sen. Joseph McCarthy – Communism scare in U.S.
*Cordelia Harvey – Civil War angel
Art/Music/Literature/Architecture
Leonardo da Vinci – inventor, artist, genius
Lorenzo de’ Medici – patron of Renaissance arts
Chinua Achebe – revival of African literature
William Shakespeare
Edgar Allan Poe – father of the mystery
Nora Zeale Hurston/Langston Hughes – Harlem
Renaissance
Mark Twain – defining American culture
Charles Dickens – writing of the “real” London
Mozart, Bach, Beethoven – influencing music
*Les Paul – Gibson guitar –changed sound of music
Michael Jackson – King of Pop
Frank Lloyd Wright – leading American architecture
Berry Gordy – Motown
*Percy Dwight Bentley – Prairie-style architecture
World History
Elizabeth I – Elizabethan era of Great Britain
Joseph Stalin – expansion of Communism
Mohandas Gandhi – Indian independence
Simon Bolivar – liberator of S. America
Cesar Chavez – Am. Farm Workers Association
Catherine the Great – Golden Age of Russia
Sun Yat-Sen – leads Chinese Republican Revolution
Vladimir Lenin – Russian Revolution
Nelson Mandela – equality in South Africa
Ho Chi Minh – Vietnam’s Communist revolutionary
leader
Fidel Castro – leader of Cuba
Desmond Tutu – South African social rights
Napoleon – Napoleonic Code/military strategy
Peter the Great – modernizing Russia
Aung San Suu Kyi – Burmese Democracy activist
Mikhail Gorbachev – leading USSR out of Cold War
Che Guevara – Argentinian revolutionary
Queen Hatshepsut – Egypt’s economic prosperity
Mao Zedong – founder People’s Republic of China
Winston Churchill – through WWII, the Cold War…
Margaret Thatcher – Britain’s strong/free economy
*Golda Meir – Israel’s prime minister from WI
Otto von Bismarck – unification of Germany
Queen Victoria – establishing the British Empire
Lech Walesa – ending Communism in Poland
Qin Shi Huang – China’s Terracotta Army
The Euro – Europe’s joint economy
Sports
Pierre de Coubertin – new Olympic Committee
Gatorade – sports and economic legacy
Curt Flood – free agency
Curly Lambeau – the people’s team
Teddy Roosevelt – how he saved football
Pop Warner – Little Scholars League sports
Gridiron Guts – Carlisle Indian School team
Jesse Owens – Olympics in Hitler’s Germany
Dick Fosbury – Fosbury Flop in high jump
Society/Religion
Mother Teresa – Missionaries of Charity
Margaret Sanger – birth control for women
John Wesley – founder of Methodism
Harvey Milk – gay rights
John D. Rockefeller – giving away his millions
St. Francis of Assisi – life of poverty – the
Franciscan Order
Martin Luther – Protestant Reformation
Christopher Columbus – opening the New World
Joseph Smith – founder of the Mormon faith
Eleanor Roosevelt – UN Decl. on Human Rights
John Calvin – continuing Protestant Reformation
Jimmy Carter – Habitat for Humanity
*Alice Green Hixon – founder of La Crosse’s League
of Women Voters
Lilly Ledbetter – equal pay for women
Alice Paul – equal rights
Veteran’s Administration – veteran’s rights
Opha Mae Johnson – women in the Marine Corps
Alfred Nobel – Nobel Prize
Billy Graham – using television to promote religion
*Father Groppi – priest civil rights activist
Peace Corps – aid around the world
YMCA – helping communities learn, grow, thrive
*Civilian Conservation Corps – putting people to
work; conserving natural resources
*John Commons – workman’s compensation
Science/ Technology/Medicine/Environment
Charles Darwin - Evolution
Albert Einstein – influencing television, GPS, and
the digital world
Frederick Douglass – spokesman for the slave
Robert Oppenheimer – the atomic bomb & beyond
Rachel Carson – Silent Spring - environmentalism
Jonas Salk – finding the polio vaccine
Mercator Projection – leading how we view the
world
Woodrow Wilson – creating the Nat’l Park Service
International Space Station – efforts to unite space
Sigmund Freud - psychoanalysis
Carl Linnaeus – classifying all life on Earth
Harvey Cushing – wartime medicine
Tuskegee – medical research
*John Muir – preservation of U.S. wilderness
*Gaylord Nelson – Earth Day
Pop Culture/Entertainment/Media
Walt Disney – revolutionizing the film &
entertainment world
Ray Kroc – a fast food/fast paced society
McDonalds – America leading a global economy
*Ringling Brothers – the circus world
Walter Kronkite – international press freedom
Barbra Walters – women in television media
Joan Rivers – women in comedy
Nelly Bly & Elizabeth Bisland – female journalists
*Dickey Chapelle – WWII female photojournalist
Mary Kay Ash – Mary Kay Cosmetics; female
Entrepreneur
Education
Ben Franklin – Library Co. of Philidelphia
William Randolph Hearst – rise of newspapers
Horace Mann – the Common School Movement
Andrew Carnegie – libraries
NAACP – Brown v Board of Education ruling
*Mary Bradford – WI’s first woman superintendent
*Bennett Law – mandatory English education
Transportation/Invention
*Stephen Babcock – butterfat tester
*William Harley – Harley-Davidson motorcycles
*Cyrus McCormick – revolutionizing agriculture
Henry Ford – father of modern industry
Charles Lindberg – flight across the Atlantic
Thomas Edison – inventor extraordinaire
Union Pacific Railroad – connecting the U.S.
Nicola Tesla – alternating current - electricity