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Jul 1, 1441
African Slavery
The first African slaves to arrive in Lisbon were 12 men kidnapped by a Portuguese captain in 1441. By the 1450s a small slave trade between Africa and Europe was in place. The greatest market for these slaves was the large sugar plantations established by the Portuguese. The introduction of horse-powered sugar mills around 1510 increased the demand for labor, so in 1518 Spain granted Portuguese slavers a license to bring slaves to America directly from Africa. -
Juan de Onate
Juan de Onate, a member of a wealthy mining family, led 130 Indian and mestizo soldiers and their families, along with some 20 missionaries, north into New Mexico with the intent of mining gold and souls in 1598. Onate encountered resistance from the Pueblo Indians, and at Acome he laid seige to the town. The Spanish succeeded in climbing the rock walls and in killing 800 men, women, and children. In 1606, Spanish authorities in Mexico recalled Onate for his failure to locate the gold mines. -
French Fur Trade
In 1605, Samuel de Champlain, an agent of the royal canadian Company, helped establish the Port Royal outpost, and three years later he founded the town of Quebec at a site strategically located so he could intercept the traffic in furs to the Atlantic. He the forged an alliance with the Huron Indians, that controlled access to the rich fur territories of the Great Lakes. By the 1670s French fur traders and missionaries were exploring the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. -
Jamestown
Early in his reign, King James I issued royal charters for the colonization of the mid-Atlantic region. In 1607 the Virginia Company, sent ships to the temperate latitudes of the Chesapeake Bay, where a hundred men built a fort they named Jamestown. It was the first permanent English settlement in North America. After a year Jamestown could no longer support itself which led to a struggle with Algonquian people. -
Tobacco
Tobacco provided the Virginia colonists with the "merchantable commodity" that Thomas Harriot had searched for. In 1613, John Rolfe developed a hybrid of hearty North American and mild West Indian varieties, and soon the first commercial shipments of tobacco reached England. The revenue from tobacco sales produced the first returns on the investment of the Virginia Company. Tobacco led to further expansion into Indian territory, and to headright grants. -
Mayflower Compact
The first English colony in New England was founded by Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were English seperatists, and in September 1620, 102 people embarked on the Mayflower, sailing from plymouth, England. When pilgrim authority became a concern, William Bradford drafted the Mayflower Compact, in which all the men of the expedition combined together into a civil body politic. Signed in November 1620, the Mayflower Compact was the first document of self-government in North America. -
Puritans/Massachusetts Bay Colony
In 1629 a royal charter was granted to a group of wealthy puritans who called their enterprise the Massachusetts bay Company. An advance force of 200 settlers soon left for the fishing settlement of Naumkeag on Massachusetts Bay, which was renamed Salem. puritans wished to reform and purify the English church from within. They argued for reviving communities by placing reformed Christian Congregations at their core to monitor the individuals' behavior. -
The Calverts
In 1632, King Charles I granted 10 million acres at the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay to the Calvert Family. The Calverts were the Lords Baltimore, making them important supporters of the monarchy. They named their colony Maryland, and the first party of colonists founded the settlement of St. Mary's near the mouth of the Potomac River in 1634. Maryland was a "proprietary" colony, and had a substantial Catholic monirity. -
Thomas Hooker/Connecticut
Thomas Hooker, a minister in Cambridge, disagreed with Puritan leaders over the extent of their authority, and believed that sufferage should not be restricted to male church members only. in 1636 he led his followers west to the Connecticut River, where they founded the town of hartford. Hooker helped write the Fundamental Orders that marked the beginning of the colony of Connecticut. -
Oliver Cromwell
In 1642 the standoff between King Charles I and the puritans in Parliament erupted in armed conflict. The civil war that followed ended in the triumph of the Parliament over the foyalist forces. The king was executed in 1649, and England was proclaimed a "Commonwealth" headed by the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell died in 1658. -
Navigation Acts
In response to complaints about merchant-dominated trading monopolies paying too little attention to the exporting of their products to colonial markets, Parliament passed a series of Navigation Acts. These created the legal and institutional system for Britian. The acts defined the colonies as both suppliers of raw materials and markets for English manufactured goods. They also aimed specifically at excluding the Dutch from the carrying trade. (1651, 1660, 1663) -
Virginia Slave Code
In 1662 colonial officials declared that children inherited the status of their slave mothers; five years later they added that baptism could no longer alter conditions of servitude. The colony then placed life-threatening violoence in the hands of masters, declaring in 1669 that the death of a slave during punishment is not a felony. In 1705 such regulations were gathered together in the Virginia Slave Code. -
Half-way Covenant
When puritanism became and established church, attendance was expected of all tonspeople, and conflicts arose over the requirement of a conversion experience. An agreement of 1662, known as the Half-way Covenant, offered a practical solution: members' children who had not experienced conversion themselves could join as "half-way" members, restricted only from participation in communion. -
King philip's War
King Philip's War erupted in 1675 when the colonial authorities at Plymouth forced the Wampanoags to concede authority over their homeland territory. Metacomet responded by breaking their alliance. In 1676 the Indian's campaign collapsed when a combined colonial army invaded Narraganset country, defeating a large Indian force in a battle called the Great Swamp Fight. In August 1676 colonists annihilated Metacomet's army. The war led to the end of organized Indian resistance in New England. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Another English-Indian confrontation took place to the south in the Chesapeake when the Susquehannock people came into conflict with tobacco planters. Nathaniel Bacon led violent raids in 1675, and when Virginia governor William Berkeley surpressed the raids, Bacon turned his fury against the colonial capital Jamestown, but died suddenly of dysentery. -
William Penn
William Penn was a member of the group of English Quakers granted proprietary rights in 1676 to the western part of New Jersey. Penn intended to make the area a religious haven for the Society of Friends. He had been imprisoned four times for publicly expressing his views, but King Charles granted him territory west of the Delaware River. Penn supervised the laying out of Philadelphia. In his first frame of government, he included eligious freedom, civil liberties, and elected representation. -
"Letter on Tolerance"
The new climate of opinion was best expressed by the English philosopher John Locke in his "Letter on Tolerance" (1688). Churches were voluntary societies, he argued, and could work only through persuasion. That a religion was sanctioned by the state was no evidence of its truth, because different nations had different official religions. Locke's ideas were embodied in the Toleration Act, passed by Parliament in 1689. -
Constitutional Monarchy
in 1689 the new monarchs agreed to a Bill of Rights, promising to respect traditional civil liberties, to summon and consult with Parliament annually, and to enforce and administer parliamentary legislation. These were significant concessions with profound implications for the future of English politics. England now had a constitutional monarchy. These changes led to the reentment of King James, and to a series of rebellions that broke out against the authorities set in place by the King. -
Salem Witch Trials
In Salem, Massachusetts during 1692, a group of girls claimed that they had been bewitched by a number of old men an women. The whole community was thrown into a panic of accusations. before the colonial governor stopped the persecutions in 1693, 20 people were tried, condemned, and executed. Most of the victims came from the eastern, more commercial part of town, whereas the accusers lived on the western side. The trials exposed the dark side of Puritan ideas about women. -
Wool Act of 1699
England passed limitations on colonial enterprises that might compete with those at home. The Wool Act of 1699 was one of those limitations. This act inspired the establishment of the Hat Act of 1732 and the Iron Act of 1750. these acts forbade the colonial manufacture of those products. -
Florida Slave Policy
One of the most benign forms of slavery operated in Florida, where Spanish colonization was undertaken primarily to create a buffer against the English. In 1699 the Spanish declared Florida a refuge for escaped slaves from English colonies, offering free land to and fugitives who would help defend the colony and convert to Catholicism. -
Slave Raiding
Sometimes large armies launched massive attacks, burning whole towns and taking hundreds of prisoners. More common were smaller raids in which a group of armed men attacked at nightfall, seized everyone within reach, then escaped with their captives. As the demand for slaves increased, raids extended deeper and deeper into the African interior. While marching to the coast, many captives died of hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. -
Middle Passage
In the 18th century English sailors christened the voyage of slave ships, the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage was the middle part of a triangle from England to Africa, Africa to America, and America back to England. Slaves were packed into shelves below deck only 6 feet long by 2 1/2 feet high. They were chained to each other at the hands and feet. This is known as tight packing. -
Nomadic Plains Indian Culture
By the early 18th century Indians of the southern fringe of the Great Plains were using horses stolen from the Spanish in New Mexico. Horses enabled Indian hunters to exploit the buffalo herds much more efficiently than before. Due to this more productive subsistence strategy, many groups built a distinctive and elaborate nomadic culture. -
French Crescent
The number of French colonists rose at an impressive rate from fewer than 15,000 in 1700, to more than 70,000 at midcentury. During the 18th century the French used their trade network and alliances with the Indians to establish a great crescent of colonies, military posts, and settlements that extended from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, southwest through the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. This was the beginning of a greaat continental empire. -
Immigration Policies
British colonies grew far more rapidly than those of other nations due to different colonial policies on immigration. In New France and New Spain restrictive policies curbed the number of European immigrants. By contrast, English authorities allowed a massive immigration of their own subjects to North America in the 17th century. A total of 150,000 English men and women had relocated to the colonies by 1700. -
Arminianism
In the 18th century many Puritans turned to the much more comforting idea that God had given people the freedom to choose salvation by developing their faith and good works, a theological principle known as Arminianism. These views were in harmony with Enlightenment, and gave God a new, loving image. These liberal ideas appealed to groups experiencing economic and social improvement. -
Harvard and Yale
The colonial elite ent their sons to college. Harvard, founded in 1636, remained the only institution of higher education in British America until 1693. Puritans in Connecticut believed Harvard was too liberal, so they founded Yale College in 1701. The curricula of these colleges matched on those of Oxford and Cambridge. In the 1730s, Harvard endowed a chair of mathematics and natural philosophy taught by John Winthrop. Harvard practiced the concept of enlightenment. -
Queen Anne's War
The first fighting of the 18th century took place during Queen Anne's War,a conflict that put Great Britain and its allies against Spain and France. In 1702 troops from South Carolina invaded Florida, plundering and burning St. Augustine in an attempt to destroy the refuge for fugitives there. The British prevailed in 1713, and Great Britain won the right to supply slaves to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, which was a very profitable business. -
French and Indian War
In 1704 the French and their Algonquian allies raided New England frontier towns, dragging men, women, and children into captivity in Canada. The English then mounted a series of expeditions against the French Fortress of Port Royal. At the war's conclusion in 1713, France was forced to cede Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson's Bay to Great Britain in exchange for security for the French-speaking residents in those provinces. -
Saybrook Platform
In 1708 the churches of Connecticut agreed to the Saybrook Platform, which enacted a system of governance by councils of ministers and elders, rather than by congregations. this reform also had the effect of weakening the passion and commitment of church members. -
Robert Walpole
During th eearly 18th century, the British government of Prime Minister Robert Walpole assumed that a decentralized administration would best accomplish the nation's economic goals. He argues that contented colonies would present less problems. Each of the colonies was administered by royally appointed governors, its taxes and finances set by constituent assemblies. Those who owned property could vote for assembly representatives. -
"Country Born Slaves"
'Country born slaves" were slaves born in the country, rather than imported from Africa. the population of slaves in the Chesapeake began growing in the 1730s. The majority of slaves were "country born" in the 1770s because the Chesapeake slaves were better-fed and more resistant to disease. "Country born slaves" brought African American cultural traditions to America such as ring shout and fictive kinship. It also introduced Creoles and mulattoes. -
The Great Awakening
Historians of religion consider the widespread colonial revival of religion, known as the Great Awakening, to be the American version of the second phase of the Protestant Reformation. religious leaders condemned the laxity, decadence, and officialism of established Protestantism and reinvigorated it with calls for piety anf pruity. People found relief in religious enthusiasm. It was started by Jonathan Edwards. He made young people his special concern. -
Poor Richard's Almanac
Almanacs were a combination calender, astrological guide, and sourcebook of medical advice and farming tips reflecting the concerns of traditional folk culture. "Poor Richard's Almanac" (1732-57), was the best remembered almanac because Benjamin Franklin used a traditional literary form to promote the new Enlightenment emphasis on useful and practical knowledge. Franklin was one of the first Americans to bring Enlightenment thought to ordinary folk. -
Molasses Act of 1733
The Molasses Act of 1733, which Parliament enacted under pressure from British West Indian planters, placed a prohibitive duty on sugar products brought from foreign colonies, to North America. Had these regulations been strictly applied, they surely would have caused conflict with the colonies, enforcement was lax due to salutary neglect. -
George Whitefield
Local revivals became an intercolonial phenomenon thanks to the preaching of George Whitefield. George was an evangelical Anglican minister from England, who in 1738 made the first of several tours of the colonies. Whitefield began as Edwards did, chastising his listeners as "half animals" and "half devils," but left them with the hope that God would be responsive to their desire for salvation. -
War of Jenkins's Ear
In 1739, a one-eared sea captain by the name of Jenkins testified before the House of Commons to the indignities suffered by British merchant sailors by the Spanish. He claimed they had cut his ear from his head, and then Prime Minister Walpole agreed to a war of Caribbean conquest. The campaign produced an agreement on the boundary between British Georgia and Spanish Florida, that seperates those states today. -
Stono Rebellion
In September 1739, a group of 20 recently arrived Angolans sacked the armory in Stono, South Carolina. Arming themselves, they began marching toward Florida and freedom. Along the way, they plundered several planters' homes and killed some 30 colonists. When they paused in a field to celebrate, they were overtaken by the militia, and destroyed ina pitched battle. -
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
A sermon written by American theologian Jonathan Edwards, first preached on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut. It combines vivid imagery of the Christian concept of hell with observations of the secular world and citations of scripture. It is Edwards' most famous written work. -
King George's War
From 1744-1748 England again battled France in King George's War. The French attacked the British in Nova Scotia, Indian and Canadian raids devastated New England and New York, and hundreds of British subjects were killed or captured. The turning point of the war was the capture of Louisburg in 1745. Despite the capture, the war had been fought elsewhere to a stalemate, so Louisburg was returned to France. First European war fought on North American soil. -
Dower
By law, husbands held managerial rights over family property. Widows recieved support in the form of a one-third lifetime interest, known as dower, in a deceased husband's real estate. the rest of the estate was divided among the heirs. As a result, some colonial women played active roles in 18th century journalism. Ann Smith Franklin took over the operation of her husband's Rhode Island shop after his death. She continued to publish her deceased husband's Philadelphis paper in the 1750s. -
Georgia
A colony created by an act of English Parliament in 1732 that originally agreed to prohibit slavery, but in 1752 the colony was opened to slavery under royal authority. By 1770 there were nearly 90,000 African Americans in the Lower South, with 80 percent of the population living on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. -
Albany Conference
The 1754 meeting, which included an official delegation from the Iroquois Confederacy, tokk place in the New York town of Albany. It was convened by officials of the British Board of Trade who wanted the colonies to consider a collective response to the continuing conflict with New France and the Indians. This proved that the colonists weren't ready to unite for a common cause, but the Plan of the Union was adopted. -
John Woolman
In 'Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes" (1754), John Woolman pointed to the Bible's declaration that all peoples were of one blood. He urged his readers to imagine themselves in the place of the African people. The Quakers first voiced the idea of antislavery. -
Treaty of Paris
In the final two years of the war the British swept French ships from the seas, conquered important French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, achieved dominance in India, and even captured the Spanish Philippines. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all its possessions on the North American mainland. It ceded its claims east of the Mississippi to Great Britain. This was a victory for the British empire. -
Paxton Boys
In an act emblematic of the anger backcountry settlers felt about restrictions, a mob of Pennsylvanians, known as the Paxton Boys, butchered twenty Indian men, women, and children at the small village of Conestoga in December 1763. When colonial authorities moved to arrest them, 600 frontiersmen marched into Philadelphia in protest. Negotiations led by Benjamin Franklin helped to prevent a bloody confrontation. -
Stamp Act
In early 1765 Greenville, unswayed by American protests, followed the Sugar Act with a second and considerably more sweeping revenue measure, the Stamp Act. This tax required the purchase of specially embossed paper for all newspapers, legal documents, licenses, insurance policies, ship's papers, and even dica and playing cards. It had to be paid in hard money, and it came in a period of economic stagnation. -
Stamp Act Congress
In October 1765, delegations from nine colonies met at what has been called the Stamp Act Congress in New York City, where they passed a set of resolutions denying Parliament's right to tax the colonists, since taxation depended on representation. The delegates also agreed that Parliament had the authority to pass laws regulating colonial trade. -
Junipero Serra
In 1769, acting on rumors of Russian expansion along the northern Pacific coast, officials in Mexico City ordered Gaspar de Portola to establish a Spanish presence in the North. With him were Franciscan missionaries led by Junipero Serra. At the harbor of San Diego, Portola and Serra founded the first mission and pueblo complex in present-day California. In 1770, he and Serra established their headquarters at Monterey Bay on the central coast. -
Boston Massacre
In what became known as the Boston Massacre, three of the crowd fell dead immediately, while six more were wounded, two of those dying later. The soldiers escaped to their barracks, but a mob numbering in the hundreds rampaged through the streets demanding vengeance. Became infamous in part because of the circulation of the Boston engraver. The incident was a disturbing reminder of the extent to which relations with their mother country had deteriorated. -
Boston Tea Party
Colonists were major consumers of tea, but because of the tax on it, the colonial market for tea collapsed. In October a mass meeting in Philadelphia denounced anyone importing the tea as "an enemy of his country." On December 16, 1773, fifty or sixty men marched to the wharf disguised as Indians. There they boarded the ships and dumped into the harbor 45 tons of tea, valued at $18,000. -
intolerable Acts
An angry Parliament passed Intolerable Acts that were calculated to punish Massachusetts and strengthen the British hand. The Boston Port Bill prohibited the loading or unloading of ships in any part of Boston Harbor until the town fully compensated the East India Company anf the customs service for the destroyed tea. With these acts, the British terminated the long history of self-rule by communities in Massachusetts. -
Lexington and Concord
Gage ordered 700 men to capture the store of American ammunition at the town of Concord. Paul Revere and William Dawes were dispatched to alert the militia of the countryside. By the time the British marched into Boston, 73 were dead and 202 wounded or missing. The British troops were vastly outnumbered by the militiamen. Forecast what would be a problem for the British: they would be forced to fight amid an armed population defending their own communities. -
Second Continental Congress
The members of the Second Continental Congress represented twelve of the British colonies on the mainland of North America. from New Hampshire to South Carolina, Committees of Observation and Safety had elected colonywide conventions, and these extralegal bodies in turn had chosen delegates. John Adams made the proposal that the delegates simply designate as a "Continental Army" the militia forces besieging Boston, and elected George Washington. -
OJ Simpson
On June 13, 1994 Nicole Brown Simpsons and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside Nicole's house in Brentwood, CA. On June 17th, OJ and his friend Al Cowlings took flight from the police in his white Ford Bronco, in a low speed chase which ended up at his mansion where he surrendered. This event made it seem like athletes were treated differently than the average person. OJ was found innocent although strong evidence pointed to him. -
The Oklahoma City Bombing
April 19, 1995: 168 people, including 8 Federal Marshals, were killed in the bombing of a federal building in Oaklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were charged and convicted in this case. For their roles in the bombing Terry Nichols received a life sentence and Timothy McVey was sentenced to death. -
JonBenét Ramsey
A beauty pageant contestant who was found murdered in the basement of her parents' home in Boulder, Colorado, United States, eight hours after being reported missing. The case drew national attention in the United States when no suspect was charged and suspicions turned to possible family involvement. The tantalizing clues of the case inspired numerous books and articles that attempt to solve the mystery. -
Titanic
Titanic opened in 1997 and became the biggest Total Box-Office Film ever in film history with over 1 Billion dollars, and also became the movie with most Academy Award totaling 13. Many people went to see the movie multiple times in the theatres. -
Bill Clinton
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial. -
Columbine Shooting
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado .Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and a teacher, injured 21 others, while 3 were injured while attempting to escape, before committing suicide. It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, and the deadliest for an American high school. -
9/11
The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners.The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the TwinTowers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in a field. -
Tsunami 2004
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred on December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The earthquake was caused by subduction and triggered a series of devastating tsunami along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 230,000 people in eleven countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 100 feet high. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history -
First Black President
Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. He was orn August 4, 1961. He served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008. obama made history and helped break down a major racial barrior. -
Princess Diana's Funeral
Millions of mourners gathered outside a London cathedral for the funeral of Princess Diana. Princess Sara and her children showed up in the crowd of mourners. Camilla Parker Bowles, refered to by Diana as a Rottweiler, was the only one who wasn't invited to the funeral. Diana was later laid to rest at the Spencer family plot.
