years of the city. they put together an exhibit called "250 in 250." it is 50 people, 50 places, 50 images, 50 moments, and 50 objects. public storage shares with us selections from one of the event the's five selections. >> we are standing in front of the 50 people selection. this section of the exhibit is the first one of visitors see when they come in to the exhibit space. mosteople section was the -- the one people fought hardest for. everybody had a certain person they really had in mind. i think setting it up was the a strongeople was starting point to talk about moments and that kind of thing. some of them are st. louis native, born and raised here and it exciting things here. some are people who came to st. louis and exciting things from somewhere else, and some are they wantedater on nothing really to do with st. louis, they just happen to be

from here. one of my personal favorites is james eads, who built the eads bridge. he taught himself from age 13 onward out to copulate structures and that sort of thing. forme basically -- how to structures and that sort of thing. and he basically taught himself how to build a stable tableting machine. he would go down and salvage these and sell them, so the eads bridge was significant because the time it was the longest arched bridge in the world at over 6000 feet long, and people were kind of terrified of it. they really did not have a lot of faith in it. today we think steel is very strong. they thought it looked like a skeleton and was ready to fall over at any time under its own weight, so eads was really impressive to me just because of a national story associate with him but also the fact that he taught himself how to become an engineer.

gerty cori is one of our selections. she came from prague with her family. her husband got a job, and even though she had the same qualifications as him, she did not. she was made a research assistant and given a salary 1/10 of his. together, they figured out how life agenda is absorbed by the body, and they won a nobel prize for the discovery. she became the first woman in history and the first american woman ever to earn a nobel prize. ♪ when people think about ragtime, st. louis has a close association with the right time mostly because of scott joplin. thomas turpin is the man we chose for the exhibit, and scott joplin did not get chosen. thomas turpin is the man who came before scott joplin even.

scott joplin cut his chops playing in thomas turpin's saloon. turpin for started publishing ragtime music in the 1890's, and he opened a saloon here in st. ,ouis called the rosebud café and it was basically where any ragtime player came to test his mettle against other ragtime or is. the other story that is not as is thetold about turpin story of african american entrepreneurs who basically just people think about african americans that sort of having to just play by the white persons rules in the 1800's, but these were african american entrepreneurs like tom turpin who basically set up their own business for blacks by blacks and found ways to make money and started this whole series of businesses within the african-american community.

a lot of times you hear about the race issues in st. louis, but there were also a lot of really creative pings coming out of the african american community that really get kind of glossed over. people selections have objects associated with them, most of them come from our collections here the museum and a couple of other places. some of the really interesting once -- we have one of chuck berry's guitars that he actually loaned to us for this exhibit. charles lundberg's flight suit is very popular with dashed roselyn berg -- charles lindbergh's flight suit is very popular. he is a feature in the city. visitors could shoot the 51st person, and each month they get to vote and we will put up whoever gets the most votes. so many people would not put in the exhibits that are very famous st. louisans, like i mentioned scott joplin or miles davis. people can vote for them and we will feature them for one month, and then onto whoever they vote

for next. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring st. louis, missouri. our local content vehicles team recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about st. louis and other stops on c-span's cities for at c-span/localcontent. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> necks of american history tv, author and state department historian james gran wilson -- james graham wilson. the event was hosted by the wilson center at the national history center. it is about one hour and 15 minutes. >> as we know, this is a relatively tense time given some

of the topics that i try to deal with in the book, the end of the cold war. i think it is worth keeping some things in perspective in 2014. you know, i start off with an example of a telephone call in the middle of the night on november 9, 1979. his military adviser is calling to say that 220 soviet icbms are on the way. he says, call me again in a minute to confirm that. the assistant called again and says i was wrong, it is now 2200 missiles. just before dialing the white