Timeline

1400s: Europe begins recovering from the Black Plague

1419: Prince Henry the Navigator sends his first expeditions out towards Africa

1469: Ferdinand and Isabella unify Spain

1487: Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese explorer, is the first to sail around the southernmost tip of Africa

1492:

  • October 12: Christopher Columbus lands on the island of San Salvador

  • The Columbian Exchange begins

1497: John Cabot, an English explorer, sails to the Chesapeake Bay in search of the Northwest Passage

1499: Amerigo Vespucci, a Spanish explorer, explores the coast of South America

1500s: The Triangular Trade starts

1500: After this point, Europe begins to experience unprecedented economic growth

1503: Spain begins to grant encomiendas to conquistadors

1513: Juan Ponce de Leon, a Spanish explorer, discovers Florida

1515: Bartolomé de las Casas appeals to King Charles I of Spain for better treatment of the natives

1518: The Middle Passage is first used to transport slaves to the Americas

1519:

  • Ferdinand Magellan, a Spanish explorer, begins an expedition to circumnavigate the world by ship

  • Hernan Cortez, a Spanish conquistador, conquers the Aztecs in Mexico

1521: Magellan dies in the Philippines

1522: Magellan’s fleet returns to Spain after having circumnavigated the world

1524: France begins exploration of the Americas

1531: Francisco Pizarro, a Spanish conquistador, conquers the Incas in Peru

1534: Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, begins looking for a Northwest Passage and exploring parts of Canada

1540: Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, a Spanish explorer, leads a large expedition from Mexico to present-day Kansas through parts of the Southwestern United States

1542: The New Laws of 1542 are passed, ending indigenous slavery and the encomienda system, replacing them with Africans to perform the enslaved labor

1572: The Inca Empire falls

1600: The Consumer Revolution begins in England

1603: Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer, begins exploring North America

1604: The Enclosure Movement begins in England, selling publicly owned land shared by everyone to people for private ownership

1607: The colony of Jamestown is established, the first permanent British colony in the Americas

1608: Samuel de Champlain establishes the first permanent French settlement in the Americas called Quebec

1609: Henry Hudson, an English explorer, navigates the Hudson River

1610:

  • Hudson explores the Hudson Bay

  • The Spanish establish Santa Fe as the capital of Nuevo Mexico

1612: John Rolfe discovers tobacco planting and saves the colony of Jamestown

1619:

  • The first Africans land in Virginia

  • The House of Burgesses is established in Virginia

1620:

  • Pilgrims first land in Plymouth Bay on the Mayflower

  • Puritans first settle New England

  • The Mayflower Compact is established

1624: King James I revokes the charter of Virginia

1625: The New Amsterdam Colony is established

1626: Peter Minuit settles New York

1629: The Massachusetts Bay Colony is chartered and settled by about 11,000 Puritans under Governor Winthrop

1630s: Sugarcane becomes the most profitable crop of the West Indies

1630: New Hampshire is settled by John Mason

1634: Lord Baltimore establishes Maryland to be a peaceful haven for Catholics

1636:

  • Thomas Hooker settles Connecticut

  • Roger Williams settles Rhode Island after being banned from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religious views

1637: The English torch Pequot villages

1638:

  • Peter Minuit settles Delaware

  • Anne Hutchinson establishes the settlement of Portsmouth

1639: The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut are written

1640s: The Beaver Wars occur

1642: The English Civil War starts

1643: The New England Confederation is created

1646: The Powhatan Chiefdom is destroyed by Lord De La Warr

1649: The Act of Toleration is passed in Maryland, promising religious toleration for all Christians

1651:

  • The Navigation Acts are first enacted

  • The English Civil War ends

1653: Proprietors settle North Carolina

1660:

  • Lord Berkeley settles New Jersey

  • The majority of Barbados’ population is black

1661: The Barbados Code of 1661 is established, legally defining African slaves as property and making slavery hereditary

1664: The English obtain New York City (New Amsterdam) from the Dutch

1670: Proprietors settle South California

1675: Metacom’s War, or King Philip’s War, occurs

1676:

  • Bacon’s Rebellion occurs against Lord Berkeley

  • Metacom is killed

1678: Metacom’s War ends

1680: The Pueblo Revolt occurs against Spain in Nuevo Mexico

1681: William Penn establishes Pennsylvania in “Penn’s Holy Experiment”, a haven for Quakers

1684: King Charles II revokes the charter of Massachusetts

1686: King Charles II replaces the New England Confederation with the Royal Dominion of New England

1689: John Locke writes Two Treatises on Government

1691: The Plymouth Bay Colony merges with the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony

1692: The Spanish reconquer Nuevo Mexico from the Pueblo

1710: The Savannah Indians in the Carolinas are eliminated

1711: The Tuscaroras of Newbern in North Carolina are defeated and enslaved

1712: The Carolinas are split into North and South Carolina

1730s: The Great Awakening begins

1732:

  • Georgia is chartered

  • The first edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack is published by Benjamin Franklin

1733: James Oglethorpe settles Georgia with the settlement of Savannah

1739: The Stono Rebellion, a slave rebellion, occurs in South Carolina

1740: The War of Austrian Succession begins

1744: King George’s War begins

1741: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is written by Jonathan Edwards

1747: King George II orders a general impressment of American men

1748:

  • The War of Austrian Succession and King George’s War ends

  • Baron Montesquieu writes The Spirit of the Laws

1750: Slavery is legalized in Georgia

1753: George Washington is sent by the Virginian governor to warn the French of encroaching on British holdings in the Ohio River Valley

1754: The French and Indian War begins

  • April: The French take over a small British fort in Pennsylvania and then build Fort Duquesne

  • May: George Washington takes back the fort

  • June: The Albany Congress begins

  • July: The French launch another invasion with a larger force and take the fort back from the British

  • July: Benjamin Franklin presents the Albany Plan of Union, which is rejected

  • The French and Indian War begins

1756: The Seven Years’ War begins

1762: Rousseau writes The Social Contract

1763:

  • The French and Indian War, and the Seven Years’ War, ends, leading to the signing of the Peace of Paris

  • The Proclamation Line of 1763 is established, forbidding colonists from migrating west of the Appalachians

1764:

  • The Sugar Act and Currency Act are passed, taxing sugar and prohibiting the colonies from printing their own currency

  • The spinning jenny is invented

1765:

  • The Quartering Act of 1765 is passed

  • The Stamp Act of 1765 is passed

  • The Sons of Liberty, the Daughters of Liberty, and the Vox Populi emerge as groups to protest against British tyranny

  • The Stamp Act Congress is held

1766:

  • The Stamp Act and the Sugar Act are repealed by Parliament

  • The Declaratory Act is passed

1767: The Townshend Acts are passed

1769: James Watt invents the steam engine

1770s:

  • Romanticism starts in Europe

1770: The Boston Massacre occurs

1773:

  • May: The Tea Act is passed

  • December: The Tea Act leads to the Boston Tea Party, with 45 tons of British tea being dumped into the ocean

1774:

  • The Intolerable Acts are passed, a series of acts meant to punish Massachusetts after the events of the Boston Tea Party

  • The Coercive Acts are passed

  • Another Quartering Act is passed

  • September: Delegates meet in the Continental Congress

  • The Shakers arrive in the colonies

1775: The Second Continental Congress is established

1776:

  • January: Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense

  • July 2: A motion for independence is passed

  • July 4: The colonies declare independence from Britain, starting the American Revolution

  • December: Washington leads the Continental Army across the Delaware River and finally wins a battle against Hessian soldiers (hired Germans) in the Battle of Trenton

1777: The Battle of Saratoga is won, convincing France to provide aid to the colonies in the revolution

1779: Spain agrees to help the colonies in the revolution

1781:

  • America defeats the British in the Battle of Yorktown and forces them to surrender

  • The Articles of Confederation is ratified

1783: The Paris Peace Treaty is signed, ending the American Revolution

1786:

  • Shays’ Rebellion starts

  • Thomas Jefferson creates the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom

  • The power loom is invented

1787:

  • The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 is passed

  • The Constitutional Convention is held to write a new Constitution, leading to the Great Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise

1788:

  • Britain passes the Slave Trade Act

  • The Federalist Papers are published

  • The Constitution is ratified

1789:

  • George Washington becomes the 1st President of the United States

  • The French Revolution begins

  • In France, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen is written

  • Massachusetts establishes elementary education for all children

1790s:

  • The Second Great Awakening begins

1790:

  • Alexander Hamilton writes his first Financial Report

  • All state debts are combined into one national debt

  • Pennsylvania begins reforming its jails and prisons into penitentiaries

1791: The Haitian Revolution begins

1792: The Bill of Rights is added to the Constitution as the first Ten Amendments

1793:

  • Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin

  • Washington issues the Proclamation of Neutrality

1794:

  • John Jay is sent to London to negotiate with Britain about British forts and impressment

  • The Battle of Fallen Timbers occurs

  • The Whiskey Rebellion occurs

1795:

  • The Pinckney Treaty is negotiated, establishing the border of the United States and Spanish West Florida

  • The 11th Amendment is ratified to protect states from being sued by people outside of the state

1796: Washington’s Farewell Address is published

1797:

  • John Adams becomes the 2nd President of the United States

  • The XYZ Affair occurs

1798:

  • The Alien and Sedition Acts are passed

  • Thomas Jefferson and James Madison write the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

1799: The French Revolution ends

1801: Thomas Jefferson becomes the 3rd President of the United States

1803:

  • The Louisiana Purchase occurs

  • Marbury v. Madison is ruled, establishing judicial review

  • Eli Whitney starts the idea of interchangeable parts to make muskets

1804:

  • The Haitian Revolution ends, leading to the first successful slave revolt and black-led nation in the Western Hemisphere

  • The Corps of Discovery is created and sent to explore the northern Louisiana Territory

  • The 12th Amendment is ratified to make the election of President and Vice President as separate elections

1807: The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair occurs, resulting in the passing of the Embargo Act

1809:

  • The Treaty of Fort Wayne is signed

  • James Madison becomes the 4th President of the United States

1810:

  • Colombia and Mexico declare independence from Spain

  • Tecumseh’s War begins

1811:

  • Venezuela declares independence from Spain

  • The Battle of Tippecanoe occurs, launching William Henry Harrison to national fame

  • The National Road is constructed, connecting Maryland to Illinois

1812: The War of 1812 starts

1813: Tecumseh’s War ends

1814:

  • August: The Burning of Washington D.C. occurs as the British torch the White House

  • September: The Star Spangled Banner is written during the Battle of Fort McHenry

  • December: The Federalists meet and threaten secession in the Hartford Convention, leading them to become very unpopular

  • The Treaty of Ghent is signed to end the War of 1812

1815: The War of 1812 ends

1816:

  • The Second Bank of the United States is chartered

  • The African Methodist Episcopal Church is founded as the first black-run Protestant Church

1817:

  • James Monroe becomes the 5th President of the United States

  • General Andrew Jackson is sent to Florida, starting the First Seminole War

1818:

  • Chile declares independence from Spain

  • The First Seminole War ends

  • The U.S.-Canadian border is established along the 49th parallel.

  • The United States and Britain agree on a joint occupation of the Oregon Territory

1819:

  • McCulloch v. Maryland is ruled, declaring that Congress has implied powers not explicitly stated in the Constitution

  • Missouri applies for statehood

  • The Tallmadge Amendment is proposed and rejected

  • John Quincy Adams negotiates the Adams-Onis treaty with Spain, establishing the western border of the U.S. with Spanish territories in the west

  • The Panic of 1819 occurs due to inflation and banks closing

1820s:

  • The Market Revolution begins

  • The factory system is born

  • The property requirement for voting for men is removed in most states by the mid-1820s

  • American Romanticism begins

  • Transcendentalism begins in the late-1820s

1820: The Missouri Compromise is passed, establishing the 36° 30’ line as the boundary for determining slave and free states

1821:

  • Missouri is admitted as a state

  • Peru declares independence from Spain

1822: The Vesey Slave Conspiracy occurs

1823: James Monroe creates the Monroe Doctrine

1824:

  • The Federalist Party ceases operations

  • The McCormick reaper is patented

  • The Era of the Common Man begins

  • The National Republican Party is founded

  • The Election of 1824 occurs, in which four candidates were up for voting and while Andrew Jackson won most of the votes, none of them won a majority so the House of Representatives decided the presidency, leading to Henry Clay getting all of his allies to vote for John Quincy Adams in what became known as the “corrupt bargain”

1825:

  • The Erie Canal is constructed, connecting Lake Erie to the Hudson River

  • John Quincy Adams becomes the 6th President of the United States

  • The Hudson River School is established

1826:

  • James Fenimore Cooper publishes the Last of the Mohicans

  • The American Temperance Party is founded

1828:

  • The Democratic Party is founded

  • Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language is published

1829:

  • Andrew Jackson becomes the 7th President of the United States

  • David Walker writes Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a series of essays calling for abolition

  • The Mexican government requires that all Americans in Texas convert to Catholicism and bans slavery

1830s:

  • Railroads and trains become the best form of transportation

  • Nativists begin spreading anti-immigrant stereotypes and invective

  • The Second Great Awakening ends

  • Yeoman farmers start gaining more voting rights

  • The Preemption Acts are passed

  • The Oklahoma Territory is designated as Indian territory

1830:

  • The Indian Removal Act of 1830 is passed

  • Joseph Smith reveals that he has been receiving revelations from God

  • The Book of Mormon is published

  • Mormonism is founded

1831:

  • The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper by William Lloyd Garrison, starts publishing

  • Nat Turner’s Rebellion occurs, a slave revolt that leads to a mass panic and mass torture of slaves

1832:

  • Jackson spreads federal money among 23 private state banks instead of keeping it in the National Bank

  • Worcester v. Georgia is ruled, declaring that Georgia had no right to interfere with the Cherokee Nation

1833:

  • The Whig Party is founded

  • William Lloyd Garrison establishes the American Anti-Slavery Society

  • The British abolish slavery

1834:

  • The National Republicans cease operations

  • Britain frees and emancipates all of their slaves

1835: The Treaty of New Echota is signed, officially exchanging Cherokee lands for reservation lands west of the Mississippi

1836:

  • Jackson orders The Specie Circular, ordering that all federal land be purchased in specie (gold & silver) instead of with paper money

  • Texan settlers revolt against Mexico under the leadership of Sam Houston

  • The Republic of Texas gains independence from Mexico

1837:

  • The Panic of 1837 occurs due to excessive money printing

  • Martin Van Buren becomes the 8th President of the United States

  • The Era of Manifestations begins, the height of the Shakers and the period in which they had the most members

  • Mount Holyoke College is founded, one of the first women’s colleges in the United States

1838: The forced removal of the Cherokee from their lands occur

1839: A mutiny occurs by slaves on the Amistad, killing the ship’s captain

1840s: The immigrant population in the United States reaches 1.5 million

1841:

  • William Henry Harrison becomes the 9th President of the United States

  • March: United States v. The Amistad is ruled, ruling to set the slaves that were on the Amistad free

  • April: William Henry Harrison takes a walk in the rain, gets sick, and dies

  • April: John Tyler becomes the 10th President of the United States

1844:

  • Joseph Smith is lynched for promoting polygamy

  • The Know Nothing party is founded

  • Samuel Morse invents the telegraph

  • YMCA is created, advocating for the Social Gospel

1845:

  • The Irish Potato Famine begins

  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist, is published

  • James K. Polk becomes the 11th President of the United States

  • July: John O’Sullivan, a newspaper editor, expresses the idea of manifest destiny

1846:

  • The Oregon Treaty is ratified, dividing it at the 49th Parallel between the United States and Britain

  • The Mexican-American War starts

  • David Wilmot proposes the rejected Wilmot Proviso, which suggested banning slavery in all land gained from the Mexican-American War

1847: Brigham Young leads the Mormons to Salt Lake City and establishes the Mormon Church

1848:

  • The failed Revolutions of 1848 occur in Europe

  • The Oneida Community is founded

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott hold the Seneca Falls Convention

  • The California Gold Rush starts

  • The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the Mexican-American War and outlining the Mexican Cession

  • The Free Soil Party is founded

1849: Zachary Taylor becomes the 12th President of the United States

1850s:

  • The consumption of alcohol is cut in half

  • Many immigrants begin arriving in the Americas

  • Late-1850s: Petroleum is discovered

1850:

  • Henry Clay proposes the Compromise of 1850

  • Zachary Taylor dies

  • Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th President of the United States

1852:

  • The Irish Potato Famine ends

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe writes Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1853:

  • The Gadsden Purchase is made, in which the southern portions of modern-day Arizona and New Mexico are sold to the U.S.

  • Franklin Pierce becomes the 14th President of the United States

1854:

  • Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, is published, a book about self-reliance and transcendentalism

  • William Lloyd Garrison burns a copy of the Constitution, claiming it is pro-slavery

  • The Treaty of Kanagawa is signed between Commodore Matthew Perry and Japan, opening up Japan to trade with the United States

  • The Free Soil Party ceases operations

  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed

  • The Sioux Wars begin

1855: Bleeding Kansas occurs

1856:

  • May: Senator Charles Sumner is caned by Senator Preston Brooks

  • The Whig Party is dissolved

  • Henry Bessemer patents the Bessemer Process for making stronger steel

1857:

  • Hinton R. Helper publishes The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It

  • The Dred Scott decision is made, ruling that the government can’t take away slaves because they were considered property

  • James Buchanan becomes the 15th President of the United States

1858: Boss Tweed becomes leader of Tammany Hall

1859: John Brown raids Harper’s Ferry in Virginia and is subsequently lynched

1860s: In the late-1860s, Joseph McCoy promotes the cattle trade in Kansas

1860:

  • The Know Nothing Party ceases operations

  • December: South Carolina secedes from the Union

1861:

  • Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16th President of the United States

  • Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina all secede from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America

  • March: The first and only Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens, gives his famous Cornerstone speech

  • April: The Civil War begins

  • July: The Confederates win the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the Civil War

  • The Old New York County Courthouse begins construction under Tammany Hall

1862:

  • The Battle of Antietam occurs, the bloodiest day in U.S. history

  • The Homestead Act is passed, giving anybody who migrated out west 160 acres of free land for them to live on and farm

  • The Pacific Railroads Acts are passed

  • George Pullman founds the Pullman Company, which produced sleeping cars for trains

1863:

  • The New York City Draft Riots occur

  • January: The Emancipation Proclamation is issued, freeing all Confederate slaves

  • May: The Siege of Vicksburg occurs, allowing the Union to gain control of the Mississippi River and splitting the Confederacy in half

  • July: Ulysses S. Grant captures Vicksburg

  • July: The Battle of Gettysburg occurs

  • September: Lincoln declares martial law and suspends habeas corpus

  • November: Lincoln says his famous Gettysburg Address

1864:

  • July: The Union wins the Battle of Atlanta

  • November: William Tecumseh Sherman starts his March to the Sea campaign

  • November: The Sand Creek Massacre occurs, in which members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes were massacred and many were scalped by the Colorado military

  • The Credit Mobilier Scandal starts

1865:

  • The Freedman’s Bureau is created

  • The 13th Amendment is ratified, banning slavery and indentured servitude

  • April 9: Robert E. Lee’s army surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant’s army at the Appomattox Courthouse, ending the Civil War

  • April 14: Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth

  • Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th President of the United States

  • The first Ku Klux Klan is formed

  • Reconstruction begins in the South

  • The Salvation Army is created, advocating for the Social Gospel

1866:

  • Ex parte Milligan is ruled, ruling that military tribunals are unconstitutional

  • The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is passed

  • Cyrus Field improves trans-Atlantic cables, linking the telegraph networks between America and Europe

  • The first labor union, the National Labor Union, strikes and fights for eight-hour workdays, workplace equality, and the right to organize

1867:

  • The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 are passed, dividing the South into five districts under military occupation

  • The Tenure of Office Act is passed

  • The Credit Mobilier Scandal ends

  • William Seward purchases Alaska from Russia for the United States for 7.2 million dollars in Seward’s Folly

1868:

  • Johnson’s impeachment trial is held

  • The National Grange Movement is created

  • The 14th Amendment is ratified

1869:

  • The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) is formed

  • The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) is formed

  • Ulysses S. Grant becomes the 18th President of the United States

  • The Black Friday gold panic occurs when the Gold Market crashes

  • The first transcontinental railroad is completed, connecting Alameda/Oakland, California to Omaha, Nebraska

  • Gold is discovered in Pike’s Peak

  • The Knights of Labor, the largest labor union during this time, is created

1870s:

  • Agricultural production for corn and wheat greatly increases

  • Telegraph cables link every continent

  • Late-1870s: Over 70,000 Mormons arrive in the Utah Territory

1870:

  • Hiram Revels becomes the first African American senator

  • John D. Rockefeller founds Standard Oil

  • New York City passes a law that requires bedrooms to have at least one window

  • The 15th Amendment is ratified, prohibiting voting discrimination based on race

  • Chinese immigrants surpass 50,000 people in number

1871:

  • The Whiskey Ring starts

  • The Indian Appropriation Act is passed, ending the sovereignty of Indian nations

1873:

  • In the Slaughterhouse Cases, it is ruled that the 14th amendment only applies to federal citizenship and not state citizenship

  • The Panic of 1873 occurs

1874:

  • Henry Grady coins the term “New South”

  • The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is founded to argue for total abstinence from alcohol

  • The Greenback Party is founded

1876:

  • June: Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his army dies fighting against the Lakota Sioux and other groups of natives in “Custer’s Last Stand”

  • The Cruikshank case is ruled, ruling that equal rights only affected the federal government, not individuals or states

  • The Whiskey Ring is exposed and ends

  • Grant’s Secretary of War is impeached for taking bribes

  • Munn v. Illinois is ruled, ruling that states could regulate commerce within states

  • Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

1877:

  • Rutherford B. Hayes becomes the 19th President of the United States

  • The Compromise of 1877 brings an end to Reconstruction

  • Jim Crow Laws begin to be created

  • Bell founds the Bell Telephone Company

  • The Gilded Age begins

  • The Great Railroad Strike occurs due to railroad companies cutting wages, shutting down more than 60% of the nation’s railroads before it grew violent and left over 100 people dead, forcing railroad employers to negotiate with the working class

1879:

  • The Exoduster Movement occurs, a mass migration of African Americans from the South to the West

  • The Colored Relief Board is founded

  • The Kansas Freedmen’s Aid Society is founded

  • Henry George proposes the Single Tax on land

1880s: In the late-1880s, Standard Oil controls almost 90% of the oil industry through horizontal integration

1880: Thomas Edison patents the lightbulb

1881:

  • James Garfield becomes the 20th President of the United States

  • James Garfield is assassinated by one of his supporters that he didn’t give a job to due to patronage

  • Chester A. Arthur becomes the 21st President of the United States

  • The Pendleton Act is passed to replace patronage with a competitive examination for federal jobs

1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act is passed, banning all immigration from China

1885:

  • Grover Cleveland becomes the 22nd President of the United States

  • Josiah Strong publishes “Our Country - Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis”

1886:

  • George Westinghouse harnesses the power of electricity and, with Nikola Tesla, creates the Westinghouse Electric Company

  • The Knights of Labor has over 700,000 members

  • May: In the Haymarket Square Riot, the Knights of Labor gather in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest for an eight-hour workday but then a bomb explodes, leading many Americans to view the Knights as radical anarchists, causing the union to fall apart

  • December: Samuel Gompers founds the American Federation of Labor

  • Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. is ruled, ruling that corporations received equal protection from the law and that states couldn’t regulate railroads

1887:

  • The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is passed, which required railroad rates to be fair and reasonable

  • The Interstate Commerce Commission is created to enforce the Interstate Commerce Act

  • The Dawes Severalty Act is passed, ending the reservation system

  • The American Protective Association is founded to stand against Catholics

1888: Edward Bellamy publishes Looking Backward

1889:

  • Jane Addams establishes the Hull House

  • The Greenback Party ceases operations

  • Benjamin Harrison becomes the 23rd President of the United States

1890:

  • The U.S. Census Bureau declares that the frontier is now officially closed

  • “How the Other Half Lives” by Jacob Riis is published

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

  • The Sherman Antitrust Act is passed to attempt to prevent the creation of monopolies

  • The Ocala Platform occurs

  • Alfred Thayer Mahan writes “The Influence of Sea Power on History”

  • December: The Wounded Knee Massacre occurs

1891:

  • The Sioux Wars end

  • The Populist Party is founded

  • Grover Cleveland becomes the 24th President of the United States

1892:

  • Andrew Carnegie founds the Carnegie Steel Company

  • The Homestead Strike occurs

1893:

  • The Significance of the Frontier in American History, an essay by Fredrick Jackson Turner, is published

  • The Panic of 1893 occurs, bankrupting a quarter of all railroads

  • The World’s Columbian Exposition, or Chicago World’s Fair, happens, an event in which millions of tourists, including foreigners, traveled to Chicago from May to October to see a showcase of American culture, inventions, and achievements

  • The Anti-Saloon League is founded

  • Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Hawaiian monarchy are overthrown by American businessmen

1894:

  • Henry Turner founds the International Migration Society to help many black Americans migrate and flee to Africa

  • The Pullman Strike occurs as a result of the Panic of 1893

  • Unemployment hits 20%

  • Coxey’s Army occurs, an event in which an “army” of roughly there thousand people protest for relief for the unemployed and for Congress to pass a bill to authorize the construction of more roads to put the unemployed to work, which is rejected

1895:

  • George Washington Vanderbilt II, the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, has the Biltmore House constructed, a 175,000 square feet house containing 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 4 floors, and 75 acres of formal gardens.

  • The Spanish stop a Cuban rebellion against Spain and force many Cubans into camps

1896:

  • Plessy v. Ferguson is ruled, ruling that “separate but equal” is constitutional

  • H. H. Holmes, considered America’s first serial killer, is executed by hanging

  • The Populists choose William Jennings Bryan as a presidential candidate but unfortunately for them, the Democrats also choose Bryan and this splits the votes between the two parties, leading to the Republican candidate, William McKinley, winning the election

1897: William McKinley becomes the 25th President of the United States

1898:

  • The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union surpasses 500,000 members

  • Hawaii is annexed by the United States

  • Gold is discovered in Alaska

  • The Anti-Imperialist League is founded

  • February: The U.S.S. Maine explodes in Havana Harbor, killing over 200 Americans

  • April: The Spanish-American War begins

  • December: The Spanish-American War ends, leading to Cuba’s independence, the annexation of the Philippines, and the annexation of Guam and Puerto Rico

1899:

  • The Open Door Policy with China is established

  • Emilio Aguinaldo leads the Filipinos in the Philippine-American War

  • The Boxer Rebellion occurs in China

1901:

  • Carnegie sells his company and starts devoting his life to philanthropy

  • J.P. Morgan buys Carnegie’s company for half a billion dollars

  • After buying several other companies as well, Morgan creates the U.S. Steel Corporation

  • The American Federation of Labor has over a million members

  • Eugene V. Debs, along with a few others, start the Socialist Party of America

  • The Platt Amendment is passed, giving the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuba if American economic interests were threatened

  • William McKinley is assassinated

  • Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th President of the United States

1902:

  • The Philippine-American War ends

  • Ida Tarbell starts publishing her 19-part expose on Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company

  • During the United Mine Workers Strike, 140,000 miners walk off the job and this leads to a 10% wage increase for the workers and a reduction in working hours from 10 per day to 9 per day. This was the first strike settled by federal arbitration

  • The Northern Securities Company, a holding company, is sued and is dissolved by the Supreme Court

1905:

  • Roosevelt establishes the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that Europeans should stay out of the Western Hemisphere

  • The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is published

  • W.E.B. DuBois founds the Niagara Movement to plan protests to secure rights for the black population

1906:

  • The Pure Food and Drug Act is passed

  • The Meat Inspection Act is passed

1907: The Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan is agreed upon, in which Japan would ban people from leaving their country for the United States

1909:

  • Frederick Taylor publishes “Scientific Management” with the goal of making factory work more efficient

  • The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established with the goal of abolishing all segregation and expanding education for black children

  • William Howard Taft becomes the 27th President of the United States

1911: Taft sues U.S. Steel, angering Roosevelt and leading to both of them running for the Election of 1912

1912:

  • The Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is established, stating that non-European powers were excluded from owning any territory in the Western Hemisphere

  • During the Election of 1912, the Republican vote is split between Taft and Roosevelt, leading to Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson winning

1913:

  • The 16th Amendment is ratified, allowing the government to tax income

  • The 17th Amendment is ratified, allowing for the direct election of senators

  • Woodrow Wilson becomes the 28th President of the United States

  • The Underwood Tariff Act is passed, lowering tariffs

  • The Federal Reserve Act is passed, creating the Federal Reserve System

  • Henry Ford opens his manufacturing plant

1914:

  • The Clayton Antitrust Act is passed

  • June: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary is assassinated

  • July: Austria-Hungary sends a list of unacceptable demands to Serbia to investigate the death in the July Ultimatum

  • July: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, and World War I begins

  • By the end of 1914, the Triple Entente (Britain, Russia, and France) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire) were all at war with each other

1915:

  • Two-thirds of the United States’ cities now own their own water systems and soon after, many came to own their own gas lines, electric power plants, and transportation systems

  • The Birth of a Nation, a racist film, is released

  • The Second Ku Klux Klan is created

  • May: Germany sinks the RMS Lusitania

1916:

  • The National Defense Act is passed to increase the regular army to roughly 175,000 soldiers

1917:

  • The Russian Revolution occurs, ending the Russian monarchy and establishing a communist government

  • January: Germany sends the Zimmermann Telegram to Mexico, leading to the United States joining World War I on the Allies’ side

  • The Selective Service Act is passed, leading to 9.5 million men being drafted by the United States

  • The United States begin shipping soldiers oversees

  • The Espionage Act is passed, making spying on the government illegal

  • The Immigration Act is passed, banning immigration from Asia

1918:

  • The American Expeditionary Forces arrive in France, turning the tide of the war in the Allies’ favor

  • The Spanish Flu begins, killing millions globally over the next few years

  • The Sedition Act is passed, making it a crime to speak out against the government, criticize the war effort, or interfere with the draft

  • November 11: World War I ends with the Treaty of Versailles and the Central Powers losing

1919:

  • Schenck v. United States is ruled, ruling that freedom of speech is not absolute, meaning that the government is allowed to silence speech if it constitutes a “clear and present danger”

  • The First Red Scare occurs

  • The Palmer Raids occur, in which Attorney General Mitchell Palmar orders the mass arrest of socialists, radicals, union leaders, and more, leading to roughly 6,000 arrests and 500 deportations

  • The 18th Amendment is ratified, banning the production and selling alcohol

1920s:

  • Automobiles and radios spread all across America

  • People begin to take on more and more loans

  • Manufacturing and mass production greatly increases

  • The advertising industry grows dramatically

  • The Harlem Renaissance begins

  • People begin buying stocks on margin

1920:

  • The 19th Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote

  • The League of Nations is founded

1921:

  • Sacco and Vanzetti are accused of being Italian anarchists and are sentenced to death

  • The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 is passed, limiting the number of allowed immigrants from a country to 3% of their population in 1910 annually

  • The Tulsa Massacre occurs

  • Warren Harding becomes the 29th President of the United States

  • The Bureau of the Budget is created to establish a single yearly budget for all government expenditures

1922: The Fordney-McCumber Act is passed, raising tariffs on imports from other countries

1923:

  • Harding dies

  • Calvin Coolidge becomes the 30th President of the United States

1924:

  • The National Origins Act is passed, restricting the limit allowed by the Emergency Quota Act to just 2% of the population in 1890

  • The Teapot Dome Scandal occurs

  • The Dawes Plan is put into effect for the paying of reparations and loans between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany

1925:

  • The Great Gatsby, by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, is published

  • The Scopes Monkey Trial occurs over the teaching of evolution in schools

1926: The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, is published

1927:

  • Sacco and Vanzetti are executed by electric chair

  • The Jazz Singer is released, the first film with synchronized sound

  • Herbert Hoover becomes the 31st President of the United States

  • China falls into civil war

1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed between 63 nations, including the United States, making war illegal

1929:

  • The Great Depression begins

  • October 29: On Black Tuesday, the stock market crashes due to speculation and buying on margin

1930s:

  • Native Americans gain citizenship

  • A political realignment of Democrats and Republicans occur

1930: The Hawley-Smoot Tariff is passed, raising tariffs on foreign products by 20%

1931: Japan invades Manchuria

1932: The Bonus March occurs in which World War I veterans protested to get their bonus early for their service in the war

1933:

  • 25% of the population is unemployed

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd President of the United States

  • FDR begins his New Deal

  • The Emergency Banking Act is passed, creating a Banking Holiday

  • At the Seventh Pan-American Conference in Uruguay, the United States pledges to never intervene in the internal affairs of a Latin American country ever again

  • The Public Works Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Agricultural Adjustment Admission, the National Recovery Administration, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration are created

  • The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed

  • The Glass-Steagall Act is passed to limit the ways banks could spend money

  • Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany

  • The 20th Amendment is ratified, making Congress terms start on January 3rd and Presidential terms start on January 20th

  • The 21st Amendment is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and the ban on alcohol

1934:

  • The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Housing Administration are created

  • The Nye Committee is created to investigate industries, profits, and banking interests during World War I

1935:

  • The Works Progress Administration is created

  • The Social Security Act is passed, creating social security

1936:

  • Germany occupies the Rhineland

  • Italy takes over Ethiopia

  • The Nye Committee exposes that many American corporations had profited off of World War I and that maybe it was greed from these companies that had caused America’s involvement in the war in the first place

1937:

  • In response to criticisms of the New Deal, FDR proposes the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill, or the “court-packing plan”, and this is quickly rejected

  • The Cash and Carry Program is established

1938: The Un-American Activities Committee is established

1939:

  • The Great Depression ends for the United States

  • September: Hitler invades Poland, leading to World War II between the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Soviet Union) and the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan)

1940s: The Baby Boomers generation begins

1940:

  • The Destroyers for Bases Deal is agreed upon between the United States and the United Kingdom

  • The Selective Service Act is passed, becoming the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history. By the end of the war, this led to roughly 15 million Americans serving in the war in total

  • France falls to Germany, creating the puppet government of Vichy France

1941:

  • The Lend-Lease Act is passed

  • December 7: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor

  • December 8: The United States declares war on Japan and joins World War II

  • The Tuskegee Airmen are founded and within the next few years, they would become renowned for their contributions and their efforts in the war

1942:

  • The War Production Board is created

  • The Bracero Program is created, which allowed Mexican farm workers to enter the U.S. and help with farming without going through immigration procedures

  • The Japanese Relocation begins

  • FDR passes Executive Order 9066, relocating over 100,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps

  • The Manhattan Project begins, a project to develop nuclear weapons

  • May: The Battle of the Coral Sea occurs

  • June: The Battle of Midway occurs

1943:

  • The Office of War Mobilization is created

  • The Soviet Union learns of the Manhattan Project through espionage

  • November: Stalin (leader of the Soviet Union), Churchill (prime minister of Britain), and Roosevelt meet to plan the opening of a second front in Europe against Germany

1944:

  • Korematsu v. The United States is ruled, ruling that the Japanese Relocation was constitutional because it was a “martial necessity arising from the danger of espionage and sabotage.”

  • The Servicemen's Readjustment Act, or the G.I. Bill, is passed to provide support to returning World War II veterans with federal aid

  • June 6: The D-Day invasion begins on the shores of Normandy

  • August: Paris is liberated from Germany

  • December: The Battle of the Bulge begins

1945:

  • The Un-American Activities Committee is reactivated to investigate government officials and other organizations to find communists

  • Ho Chi Minh establishes a communist government in North Vietnam

  • February: Stalin, Churchill, and FDR meet at the Yalta Conference to plan out what was going to happen after the war ended. For example, they planned out which nation was going to occupy which part of Germany after the war. Additionally, they agreed that the eastern European nations would have the right to have free elections

  • April: FDR dies

  • April: Harry Truman becomes the 33rd President of the United States

  • April 30: Hitler takes his own life

  • May 7: Germany surrenders in V-E Day

  • August 6: The first atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima

  • August 9: Another atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki

  • September 2: Japan surrenders in V-J Day, ending World War II

  • October 24: The United Nations is created to replace the League of Nations

1946:

  • The USSR begins establishing communist dictatorships in central and eastern European countries such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia

  • Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes a best-selling self-help book titled Baby and Child Care

  • Truman establishes the Committee on Civil Rights

  • March: Winston Churchill says that it was like “an iron curtain has descended across the continent” of Europe

1947:

  • The Cold War begins

  • Truman launches the Containment Policy and the Truman Doctrine

  • The Truman administration sets up a Loyalty Review Board to investigate the background of more than 3 million federal employees

  • The first Levittown begins construction

  • The Taft-Hartley Act was passed in order to stop the growing power of unions

  • Billy Graham starts his first annual Crusade

1948:

  • The United States enacts the Marshall Plan which would lend twelve billion dollars to European nations to help them rebuild

  • The Berlin Airlift begins

  • Truman orders for the end of racial discrimination in the federal government, including in the armed forces

  • In the Hiss Case, Alger Hiss, an official in the State Department, is accused of being communist and sent to prison

1949:

  • The USSR consolidates their occupied territories in Germany into the German Democratic Republic

  • NATO is founded

  • The Chinese Civil War ends, establishing a communist government in China

  • The USSR and the United States withdraw their armies from North Korea and South Korea

1950s:

  • Television spreads all across the country

  • Plastic credit cards are created

  • In the Lavender Scare, large amounts of homosexual people were fired from the U.S. government and many feared that homosexual people were as dangerous as communists

  • The Eisenhower administration fails to encourage natives to leave reservations and assimilate into urban society

1950:

  • The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance is signed, making China allies with the USSR

  • North Korea attacks South Korea and this starts the Korean War, in which the United States, the USSR, and China gets involved

  • The McCarren Internal Security Act is passed, making it illegal to support totalitarian governments

    Senator Joseph McCarthy declares that he had a list of over 200 communists in the government, leading to the beginning of McCarthyism and turmoil in the Truman administration

1951: The 22nd Amendment is ratified, limiting the amount of terms a president can serve to two

1952:

  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka begins, in which a team of NAACP lawyers argued that school segregation was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of laws”

1953:

  • Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the 34th President of the United States

  • Eisenhower starts Modern Republicanism

  • The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is created

  • The Korean War ends, changing nothing

  • The hydrogen bomb is developed by the United States

  • Stalin dies

  • Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are electrocuted for being charged with stealing technology and transmitting atomic secrets to the USSR

  • Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450, banning homosexuals from working in the government

  • The Iranian Prime Minister, due to wanting to nationalize the oil industry, is overthrown in favor of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who is much more friendly with the U.S. and kept providing them with oil in exchange for weapons and money

1954:

  • The Soviets develop a hydrogen bomb of their own

  • McCarthy accuses the leaders of the army of being communists, leading to the televised Army-McCarthy hearings and his censure

  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is ruled, ruling that separate facilities were inherently unconstitutional and overturning Plessy v. Ferguson

  • The CIA trains a force of insurgents that overthrows Jacobo Arbenz, the leader of Guatemala, and installs a military dictatorship in his place.

1955:

  • The Geneva Convention is held and the United States proposes an “open-skies” policy between them and the USSR, which is rejected

  • Emmett Till is murdered

  • In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat in the colored section of a bus for a white passenger, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott, lasting over a year

  • The Vietnam War begins between North Vietnam and South Vietnam

  • Up until 1961, the U.S. government would send over a billion dollars in economic and military aid to South Vietnam to protect them against communism

  • William Buckley creates a conservative magazine called the National Review

1956:

  • The Interstate Highway System is passed, authorizing the construction of roughly 42,000 miles of interstate highways to connect all of the nation’s major cities

  • The Southern Manifesto is signed, a document denouncing Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and declaring that it was an abuse of judicial power

1957:

  • McCarthy dies of alcoholism

  • MLK forms the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which organized ministers and churches in the South to help the Civil Rights Movement

1958: The John Birch Society is created

1959:

  • Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and nationalizes American-owned businesses in Cuba

  • Cuba becomes a communist state

1960s:

  • The Counterculture occurs

  • The hippie counterculture becomes popular

  • A large conservative movement begins rising in the United States

1960:

  • The U-2 Incident occurs, in which the Russians shoot down a high-altitude U.S. spy plane over the USSR and expose that the U.S. had started conducting spy flights over Soviet territory in order to investigate the Soviet missile program

  • Khrushchev denounces the United States due to the U-2 Incident

  • Eisenhower approves the training of anti-communist Cuban exiles to overthrow the Cuban government

  • February: The Greensboro sit-ins start after college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, were refused service at a store

  • April: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is formed to organize sit-ins and mobilize black voters throughout the South

  • The Young Americans for Freedom organization is founded

1961:

  • John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the United States

  • Mapp v. Ohio is ruled, ruling that illegally-acquired evidence could not be used in court

  • The 23rd Amendment is ratified, giving the citizens of Washington D.C. the right to elect their own electors

  • April: JFK launches the bay of Pigs Invasion using the Cuban exiles, which fails terribly

  • August: The Berlin Wall begins construction

1962:

  • The USSR begins a massive arms buildup in Cuba to protect it from another American invasion

  • U-2 flights over Cuba discover these missile sites

  • Baker v. Carr is ruled, ruling that redistricting of state legislative districts is justiciable and can be judged in federal courts, forcing states to redraw their districts to accurately represent populations

  • Engel v. Vitale is ruled, banning forced school prayer

  • The Cuban Missile Crise occurs

  • Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam loses the support of his people

  • “The Other America” is published, bringing national attention to the problem of poverty in the United States

  • The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organization creates the Port Huron Statement, calling for university decisions to be made through participatory democracy with the voice of students

1963:

  • The Moscow-Washington hotline is created to speed up communication between the two powers

  • A massive protest is led by MLK in Birmingham with the intent of integrating public facilities and opening up jobs for black people

  • Betty Friedan publishes a book titled “The Feminine Mystique”

  • The Equal Pay Act is passed, which required that people with the same job and same work to be given the same pay

  • Gideon v. Wainwright is ruled, ruling that everyone had the right to an attorney regardless of if they could afford one

  • May: 5,000 children march in the Children’s Crusade around Birmingham to protest segregation

  • June: MLK writes his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail

  • The JFK administration intervenes in Birmingham and ends segregation in the city

  • August 4: More than 200,000 people gather in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington, which culminates in MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech

  • Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, immolates himself in protest of Diem

  • Diem is overthrown by his own generals and killed

  • November: JFK is assassinated

  • Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th President of the United States

1964:

  • LBJ passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited all racial discrimination in public places and employment

  • The 24th Amendment is ratified, abolishing poll taxes

  • August: The North Vietnamese attack Maddox, an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin

  • The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution permits LBJ to take “all necessary measures” needed to protect American interests in Vietnam

  • LBJ declares a war on poverty

  • The Office of Economic Opportunity is created

  • The Food Stamp Act is passed

  • The Young Americans for Freedom assist Barry Goldwater in running for President, which fails

  • Barry Goldwater coins the term “The New Right”

1965:

  • Griswold v. Connecticut is ruled, ruling that states can’t prohibit the use of contraceptives due to the people’s right to privacy

  • LBJ signs Executive Order 11246, which required “affirmative action” in hiring to increase the number of minorities and women in the workplace

  • March: The Selma to Montgomery marches occur

  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed, which banned literacy tests and discrimination at the voting booth

  • LBJ launches Operation Rolling Thunder, an aerial bombardment of North Vietnamese targets to damage their economy

  • LBJ starts his Great Society agenda to improve American society

  • Medicare and Medicaid are created

  • The Elementary and Secondary Education Act is passed

  • The Higher Education Act is passed

  • The National Foundation of Arts and Humanities is established

  • The Immigration and Nationality Act is passed, ending immigration quotas from the 1920s

1966:

  • Miranda v. Arizona is ruled, ruling that everybody arrested needed to be read their rights

  • Friedan helps found the National Organization for Women (NOW)

  • The Child Nutrition Act is passed

1967:

  • A period of détente begins between the United States and the USSR

  • 500,000 American troops are now in Vietnam

  • The 25th Amendment is ratified, establishing the line of succession for president

1968:

  • MLK is assassinated

  • The American Indian Movement (AIM) is founded with the goal of achieving self-determination for natives

  • January: The Vietcong launch the Tet Offensive, an all-out surprise attack on South Vietnam that greatly changes public opinion of the Vietnam War at home, causing millions of Americans to believe that LBJ had failed in the war

  • March: LBJ announces that he would try to negotiate peace with North Vietnam

1969:

  • Richard Nixon becomes the 37th President of the United States

  • Nixon starts Vietnamization, the removal of American troops from Vietnam

  • The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) begin

  • AIM takes over an abandoned prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco

  • Nixon establishes the Nixon Doctrine, declaring that while future Asian countries would receive U.S. support against communism, the U.S. would not intervene with their military

  • Thousands of young people gather at the Woodstock Music Festival

  • The Santa Barbara oil spill kills thousands of animals along the California coastline

  • Nixon authorizes a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, Operation Menu, as part of the Vietnam War

1970s:

  • Oil and gas prices start increasing

  • There is a national recession due to the Vietnam War

1970:

  • The amount of African American voters rise from 40% in 1960 to 65%

  • The Kent State Massacre occurs

1971: The 26th Amendment is ratified, reducing the voting age from 21 to 18

1972:

  • Nixon visits China and ends two decades of hostility between the two nations by establishing an American liaison mission in Beijing

  • Nixon signs SALT I with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, which limited the two superpowers to just two hundred anti-ballistic missiles each

  • Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 outlaws gender discrimination in federally subsidized education programs

  • Only 30,000 American troops are left in Vietnam

  • Nixon wins the Election of 1972 by appealing to the “silent majority”

  • June: CREEP, an association working to re-elect Nixon, gets involved in a burglary of the Watergate office complex in D.C. This is soon traced back to Nixon

1973:

  • AIM occupies Wounded Knee in South Dakota

  • The Paris Peace Accords is signed, promising a ceasefire and removing the United States from the Vietnam War

  • Arab nations form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in order to control the prices of oil they were exporting, greatly reducing the amount of oil being exported to the United States

  • Roe v. Wade is ruled, ruling that prohibiting abortions was unconstitutional and is a violation of the right to privacy

  • Operation Menu is publicly discovered, leading to public outrage

  • The War Powers Act is passed to limit the power of the President in war

  • Regarding Watergate, it is discovered that Nixon had tried to cover the scandal up by withholding tape recordings of the Oval Office

1974:

  • August: Nixon resigns

  • Gerald Ford becomes the 38th President of the United States

  • September: Ford pardons Nixon of all federal crimes

1975:

  • The Indian Self-Determination Act is passed

  • The Energy Policy and Conservation Act is passed to set corporate standards for gas mileage

  • April: Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, falls to North Vietnam, turning Vietnam into a communist country

1977:

  • Jimmy Carter becomes the 39th President of the United States

  • James Dobson starts his Focus on the Family radio program

1978:

  • The Tribally Controlled Community Colleges and Universities Assistance Act is passed

  • Regents of the University of CA v. Bakke is ruled, ruling that while affirmative action is constitutional, racial quotas were not

1979:

  • Carter signs SALT II with the USSR, banning new missile programs and limiting the size of each superpower’s nuclear delivery system

  • The USSR invades Afghanistan

  • Jerry Falwell, a pastor, founds the Moral Majority

  • The Sandinistas overthrow the authoritarian Nicaraguan government

  • The CIA begins supplying the Contras, exiles fighting against the Sandinistas, to attempt to overthrow them

  • March: A reactor at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg in Pennsylvania nearly melts down and causes thousands of people to flee

1980s:

  • The AIDS epidemic begins

  • Many American manufacturing jobs begin to be transferred overseas or become automated

  • The Rust Belt is created

1980:

  • Carter issues the Carter Doctrine which halts grain exports and technology to the USSR and boycotts the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games after the USSR invaded Afghanistan

  • Inflation reaches the double-digits in the United States

1981:

  • Ronald Reagan becomes the 40th President of the United States

  • The Economic Recovery Act is passed, reducing personal income taxes by 25% over the next three years

  • The United States enters a recession

  • NASA’s space shuttle fleet starts its first launch, starting 30 years of space missions

  • Reagan vows to crack down on drugs and greatly increases penalties for drug crimes

  • Sandra Day O’Connor is appointed as the first woman in the Supreme Court

1982: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the Soviet premier

1983: The economy starts recovering from the recession of the early-1980s

1984:

  • The “Just Say No” campaign is launched, which encouraged children to just say no to drugs

  • The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is developed, an antimissile system that was planned to use lasers to destroy missiles in outer space

1985:

  • The United States becomes a debtor nation due to heavy military spending

  • The Iran-Contra Affair is exposed

  • Perestroika is introduced to Russia, introducing free-market practices to the economy

1986:

  • Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson is ruled, ruling that sex discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace is a violation of the Civil Rights Act

  • The Chernobyl nuclear power plant fails and releases large amounts of radiation into the environment

  • William Rehnquist becomes the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the Court becomes highly conservative

  • Antonin Scalia is appointed to the Supreme Court

  • Glasnost is introduced to Russia, introducing political openness

1987:

  • 400,000 people are imprisoned for drug offenses

  • The Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty is signed between the United States and the USSR, an agreement in which the two powers would remove and destroy all intermediate-range missiles in Europe

1988: Anthony Kennedy is appointed to the Supreme Court

1989:

  • The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurs in Alaska

  • Pro-democracy protests erupt in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square

  • The Chinese military stops the protests in the Tiananmen Square Massacre

  • George H. W. Bush becomes the 41st President of the United States

1990:

  • Many Soviet countries begin declaring independence and having free elections, removing themselves from communism and establishing free-market economies

  • Iraq invades Kuwait to take control of its oil reserves

  • H. W. Bush persuades Saudi Arabia to accept a buildup of American troops in Operation Desert Shield

  • Operation Desert Shield becomes Operation Desert Storm and Bush persuades Congress to approve the use of military force to liberate Kuwait

1991:

  • A coup against Gorbachev fails

  • The USSR is dissolved

  • Boris Yeltsin is elected as the first president of the Russian Republic

  • An assault on Kuwait City was launched, liberating the country and greatly improving Bush’s approval ratings

  • The price of oil falls

  • The World Wide Web becomes public

1992:

  • H. W. Bush pardons all who were involved with the Iran-Contra Affair

  • The 27th Amendment is ratified, prohibiting members of Congress from getting a pay raise until the next term

1993: Bill Clinton becomes the 42nd President of the United States

1994: Amazon is founded

1995: eBay is founded

1996: More than 300,000 Americans are dead from AIDS

1997: In the Kyoto Protocol, many countries agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but the United States does not ratify this treaty

1998: Paypal is created

2000: George W. Bush wins the Election of 2000 against Al Gore with only a few hundred more votes in Florida

2001:

  • George W. Bush becomes the 43rd President of the United States

  • September 11: al Qaeda drives planes into the Twin Towers, killing thousands of people

  • The Patriot Act is passed

  • The War on Terror begins

  • W. Bush declares the Bush Doctrine

  • December: The Taliban government in Afghanistan is overthrown

2002: The Department of Homeland Security is created

2003:

  • The United States launches an invasion of Iraq from Kuwait in Operation Iraqi Freedom

  • April: Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, is captured by the United States

2004:

  • Facebook is created

  • Pictures of the U.S. abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib are revealed

2006: Twitter is created

2008:

  • The Great Recession occurs and the housing market collapses

  • The Economic Stabilization Act is passed, creating the Troubled Assets Relief Program

2009:

  • Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States

  • Venmo is created

  • The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is passed, providing tax cuts and money to state and local governments

2010: Instagram is created

2011:

  • NASA ends its space shuttle program

  • Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, is killed in Pakistan

  • All U.S. forces in Iraq are withdrawn

2012: The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is created

2014: The United States begins withdrawing from Afghanistan and changes their focus to training the Afghan military instead of occupying them

2015: In the Paris Climate Accords, the United States and many other nations agree to keep the rise in mean global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels

2017: Donald Trump becomes the 45th President of the United States