1900-1920

By Micah McDowell

  • First Successful Aircraft

    First Successful Aircraft
    Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Orville and Wilbur, two American aviation pioneers, created the first successful motor-operated aircraft.

  • Seventeenth Amendment

    Seventeenth Amendment
    Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, providing for the direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote rather than by the state legislatures.

  • 1st Transcontinental Call

    1st Transcontinental Call
    First long distance telephone service, between New York and San Francisco, is demonstrated. Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call spanning the continental United States, placing a call from New York to his assistant, Thomas Watson in San Francisco. This man was the same Thomas Watson that Bell had placed the first telephone call to back in 1876.

  • First Women in House of Representatives.

    First Women in House of Representatives.
    Jeannette Pickering Rankin was an American politician and women's rights advocate, and the first woman to hold federal office in the United States.Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

  • World War I Entry

    World War I Entry
    U.S. enters World War I, declaring war on Germany on April 6, 1917.

  • First Airmail

    First Airmail
    First regular airmail service begins, with one round trip a day between Washington, DC, and New York.

  • Nineteenth Amendment

    Nineteenth Amendment
    Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote. This ended a century of protests.

  • Treaty of Versailles

    Treaty of Versailles
    Treaty of Versailles, outlining terms for peace at the end of World War I. The treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied powers.