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The 1620s were a time of political and religious turmoil in England. The protracted struggle for supremacy between monarch and Parliament reached new heights in 1629, when King Charles I disbanded the rival body and ruled alone for 11 years. Official pressure was also applied on religious dissenters, notably the the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Some were imprisoned for their nonconformist views and others lost lucrative official positions.  Time to find a New World in which to build a "City Upon a Hill."

The New World wasn't exactly new.  Native Americans, for thousands of years, prospered before European contact.  Spain possessed much of South America, while France acquired the central portions of North America.  On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 British members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years brought this Atlantic coastal colony to the brink of failure before the arrival of a new group of settlers and supplies in 1610. 

Something was terribly wrong in America in the 1970s. The United States was supposed to be a superpower, yet American forces proved powerless to stop a tiny guerrilla force in Vietnam. Support for Israel in the Middle East led to a rash of terrorism against American citizens traveling abroad, as well a punitive oil embargo that stifled the economy and forced American motorists to wait hours for their next tank of gasoline. At home, the news was no better. The worst political scandal in United States history forced a president to resign before facing certain impeachment. But all was saved - not by President Jimmy Carter, but by disco music, mood rings, and pet rocks.

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won.  Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well.  In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protests outside the Pentagon.  Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.  Amid this turbulent time, a counterculture of flower power was also emerging, giving way to sex, drugs, and scores of unforgettable music.

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.