Illustration of boers capturing british soldiers

20th Century Timeline

  • The Second Boer War

    The Second Boer War
    A costly victory for the British of Boer forces in South Africa. Awareness of the conflict among the people of the United States is evidenced in American popular culture.
  • The Wright Brothers And The Airplane

    The Wright Brothers And The Airplane
    The story goes that Wilbur and Orville Wright were an inseparable duo that were equally responsible for developing the theory of aeronautics and translating it into the first workable airplane.
  • Titanic

    Titanic
    It sank on April 15, 1912, off the coast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. Over 1,500 of the 2,240 passengers and crew lost their lives in the disaster.
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    The Russian Revolution

    After the war, it was officially atheistic, communist, rapidly industrializing, and becoming one of two superpowers that dominated the 20th century.
  • World War One Ends

    World War One Ends
    After Germany’s failed spring offensive, realized the only way to win was to push into France before the United States fully deployed its resources.
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    The Road to War: Germany

    The Weimar constitution created a semi-presidential system in which power was divided between the president, a cabinet and a parliament.
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    United States Drops Two Atomic Bombs on the Japanese Cities Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki

    Between December 1942 and July 1945, a team of scientists, working in secret facilities in various parts of the U. S., researched, built, and tested the world’s first atomic bomb.
  • The Truman Doctrine Is Announced

    The Truman Doctrine Is Announced
    The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech by President Harry Truman, but it has informally become the basis of the U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and afterwards.
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    The Iran-Contra Affair Begins

    The foreign-policy scandal known as the Iran-contra affair came to light in November 1986 when President Ronald Reagan confirmed reports that the United States had secretly sold arms to Iran. He stated that the goal was to improve relations with Iran, not to obtain the release of U.S. hostages held in the Middle East by terrorists (although he later acknowledged that the arrangement had in fact turned into an arms-for-hostages swap).
  • Vladmir Putin Invades Chechnya

    Vladmir Putin Invades Chechnya
    The Russian Federation invaded the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in the Northern Caucasus. While tensions between Russia and Chechnya did not begin with Putin, Putin used the conflict to establish himself as Russia’s supreme leader.