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Supreme Court gave African Americans the right to vote.
In 1940 only three percent of African American’s registered to vote in the South. The reason for this was because many African Americans were afraid to vote because they were being threatened. I think that this is important in America because racism was still a huge issue at this time. African Americans were given the right to vote but because of racial discrimination, only a few of them actually voted. -
Mount Rushmore was completed.
Mount Rushmore was completed in October, 1941. It is located in the Black Hills in South Dakota. It has four faces of former presidents of the United States, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. This is important because all of these presidents are very important to American History because each one of them changed America in their own way. Many Americans appreciated this monument because it was a way to thank and remember them. -
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was created.
Phillip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, felt that even though all of the men were going off to war, baseball should still be around. He was thinking of ways to keep it running with all of the men away and he ended up deciding that girls could play the sport. His initial plan was to have a team in big cities that already had a professional field, but many of the owners told him no so he just started of with four teams in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Wrigley first thought that having form -
The T-shirt was becoming popular.
Before the T-Shirt, men in the military wore sleeveless shirts as their undershirts. In 1944 there was a survey that asked the men if they preferred a sleeveless shirt or a T-shirt. Many of the men voted on the T-shirt because they thought it made them look better, also they thought that it was more comfortable. It absorbed sweat better, they thought it was more comfortable to wear backpacks with them on, and they also thought it protected them from being sunburn better. The reason that this is -
The Ballpoint pen was made.
Many people had tried to make something like a ballpoint pen in the past, but none of them could really make it work. One morning in the middle of October, a store in New York City called Gimbel’s Department Store sold the first successful ballpoint pen. At the beginning of the day the store had 10,000 pens and by the end of the day they had 0, they sold all of them for $12.50 a pen. The reason so many people wanted this pen was because it was said in a newspaper ad the day before, that it was s -
The Microwave oven was created.
Microwave energy was initially used in World War 2 to spot out enemy airplanes. Years later, Percy LeBaron Spencer found that microwave energy could be used to cook food when he had a candy bar in his pocket and the energy melted it. Interested by this, he started to test and found out that microwave energy made the temperature of foods increase a lot quicker then with just a regular oven. The first actual microwave however was about the size of a refrigerator. The microwave oven is really impor -
The U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan
“Little Boy” and “Fat Man” were the names of two bombs that would change the way fighting in the world was looked at. These two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. They completely wiped out both of these cities and killed/injured many people. This is an important event for many reason. One, no one had ever used an atomic bomb before so it was a first. Two, it killed and injured many people in Japan. Three, it ended World War 2 because it forced Japan to surrender. And the last -
The first computer was made
In 1946 the first digital computer, the ENIAC, was completed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. This computer however was not the same as a computer we think of today. It weighed over 30 tons, had 19,000 tubes, and 6,000 switches. To be able to operate this computer needed multiple people. One thing that amazed many people was that this computer could add 5,000 numbers in a second. Although this computer was a lot different than computers now, it was really important because people at this t -
The Bikini was introduced
The bikini was created by Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. At first Heim created a small bathing suit that he called the Atome. He had it advertised as the “World’s smallest bathing suit.” A few weeks after the Atome was made, Reard came up with the Bikini and he had it advertised as, “Smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world.” This is important to American culture, because many women were going out and buying this new bathing suits. It changed women’s clothing styles, because before th -
The Big Bang Theory was made.
This theory was first thought up by an American Astronomer named Edwin Hubble. He thought that the universe first started out all clumped together, and over the years it has slowly been expanding itself. This is important during this time period, because many people believed that God created the universe. With the big bang theory however, people didn’t have to believe that the universe was created by God, they could believe this theory if they didn’t believe in God.
