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12,000 BCE
by 12,000 B.C. Humans have migrated to the Americas, most of them from Siberia
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1492
Columbus, sailing for Spain, makes first voyage of discovery
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1497
John Cabot explores Newfoundland
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1503
First Africans are brought to the Americas
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1513
Juan Ponce de León explores Florida
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Period: 1517 to
Protestant Reformation spurs religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants
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1519
Hernán Cortés begins the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
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1531
Francisco Pizarro subdues the Incas of Peru
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1541
Jacques Cartier, sailing for France, explores the St. Lawrence River
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Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English colony, is established
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Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec
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Pocahontas marries John Rolfe
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First Africans arrive in English America
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First Africans arrive at Jamestown
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Plymouth colony is founded; Pilgrims agree to the Mayflower Compact
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Indian uprising in Virginia
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Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded
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Settlement of Maryland begins
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Harvard College is established
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Pequot War
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Period: to
English Civil War
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Restoration of the Stuart monarchy—King Charles II
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Restoration of the English monarchy
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Puritans initiate the “Half-Way Covenant”
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Virginia enacts law declaring that children of slave women are slaves
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The French explore the Mississippi River valley from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico
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Period: to
King Philip’s War
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Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia
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Pennsylvania is established
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Dominion of New England is established
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Glorious Revolution
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Royal charter for Massachusetts is established
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Salem witchcraft trials
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Period: to
Great Awakening
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Georgia is founded
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John Peter Zenger is tried for seditious libel
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Stono Uprising
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George Whitefield preaches his first sermon in America, in Philadelphia
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Jonathan Edward preaches “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
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Albany Congress adopts Plan of Union
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Period: to
French and Indian War
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Pontiac’s Rebellion
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Parliament passes the Revenue (Sugar) Act
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Parliament repeals the Stamp Act and passes the Declaratory Act
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Parliament levies the Townshend duties
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Boston Massacre
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Colonists stage the Boston Tea Party
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Parliament passes the Coercive Acts; colonists hold First Continental Congress
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Battles of Lexington and Concord
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Colonists hold Second Continental Congress
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Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is published; Declaration of Independence is signed
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General Washington’s troops cross the Delaware River; Battle of Trenton
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Period: to
Washington’s troops winter at Morristown, New Jersey
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Battle of Saratoga; General Burgoyne surrenders
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Period: to
Washington’s troops winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
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Americans and French form an alliance
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Battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse
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General Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, Virginia
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Articles of Confederation are ratified
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Articles of Confederation take effect
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Treaty of Paris is signed
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General Washington puts an end to the Newburgh Conspiracy
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Treaty of Fort Stanwix forces the Iroquois to give up land in New York and Pennsylvania
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Land Ordinance outlines a plan for surveying and selling government lands
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Virginia adopts the Statute of Religious Freedom
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Delegates decide to call for a constitutional convention
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Period: to
Shays’s Rebellion
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Northwest Ordinance outlines a detailed plan for organizing western territories
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The Constitutional Convention is held in Philadelphia
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Period: to
The Federalist Papers are published
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Confederation government is phased out
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President George Washington is inaugurated
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French Revolution begins
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Rhode Island becomes the last state to ratify the Constitution
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Bill of Rights is ratified
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1791 Bank of the United States is created
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Slave revolt in Santo Domingo (Haiti)
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Washington issues a proclamation of neutrality
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Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin
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Jay’s Treaty is negotiated with England
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1794 Whiskey Rebellion
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Philadelphia-Lancaster Turnpike is completed
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Pinckney’s Treaty is negotiated with Spain
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Wilderness Road opens
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By the Treaty of Greenville, the United States purchases western lands from Native Americans
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President Washington delivers his farewell address
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XYZ affair
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1798 Alien and Sedition Acts are passed
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Gabriel conspiracy in Richmond, VA
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Thomas Jefferson is elected president
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Marbury v. Madison
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1803 Louisiana Purchase
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Period: to
Lewis and Clark expedition
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1807 Chesapeake affair
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Embargo Act is passed
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Clermont, the first successful steamboat, sails to Albany
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1808 International slave trade is outlawed
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Participation in the international slave trade is outlawed
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Supreme Court issues Fletcher v. Peck decision
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1811 Battle of Tippecanoe
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Charles Deslondes Revolt in Louisiana
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1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend
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1814 Treaty of Ghent
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Hartford Convention
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Battle of New Orleans
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Construction of the National Road begins
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Second Bank of the United States is established
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First protective tariff goes into effect
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American Colonization Society is founded
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Supreme Court issues McCulloch v. Maryland decision
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United States and Spain agree to the Transcontinental (AdamsOnís) Treaty
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Tallmadge Amendment
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Florida becomes a territory
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Missouri becomes a state
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Mexico gains independence from Spain
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Denmark Vesey conspiracy is discovered in Charleston, South Carolina
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President Monroe enunciates the principles of the Monroe Doctrine
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Supreme Court issues Gibbons v. Ogden decision
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John Quincy Adams wins the presidential election by what some critics claim is a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay
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Erie Canal opens
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Ministers organize the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance
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John C. Calhoun publishes the South Carolina Exposition and Protest
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Andrew Jackson wins presidential election
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“Tariff of Abominations” goes into effect
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Congress passes the Indian Removal Act
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Andrew Jackson vetoes the Maysville Road Bill
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Joseph Smith reveals the Book of Mormon
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Period: to
Charles G. Finney begins preaching in upstate New York
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Cyrus McCormick invents a mechanical reaper
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Supreme Court issues Cherokee Nation v. Georgia decision
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1831 Nat Turner leads slave insurrection in Virginia
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William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of The Liberator
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Supreme Court issues Worcester v. Georgia decision
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Andrew Jackson vetoes the Bank Recharter Bill
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South Carolina issues ordinance of nullification
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Congress passes Henry Clay’s compromise tariff
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American Anti-Slavery Society is founded
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National Trades’ Union is organized
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Martin Van Buren is elected president
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Transcendental Club holds its first meeting
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Americans are defeated at the Alamo
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Financial panic follows a drop in the price of cotton
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John Deere invents the steel plow
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Period: to
Eastern Indians are forced west on the Trail of Tears
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William Henry Harrison, a Whig, is elected president
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Abolitionists form the Liberty party
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John Tyler becomes president
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Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issues Commonwealth v. Hunt decision
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Americans and British agree to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty
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Rainbow, the first clipper ship, is launched
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is published
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United States annexes Texas
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Mexican War begins
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Elias Howe invents the sewing machine
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Mormons, led by Brigham Young, undertake trek to Utah
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Most members of the Donner party die en route to California
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California gold rush begins
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At the Seneca Falls Convention, women issue the Declaration of Sentiments
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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War
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Free-Soil party is organized
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California gold rush begins
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California gold rush begins
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Sojourner Truth delivers her famous speech Ain’t I a Woman?
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Plains Indians agree to the Fort Laramie Treaty
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Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published
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With the Gadsden Purchase, the United States acquires thirty thousand square miles from Mexico
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Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods is published
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Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act
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The Republican party is founded
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Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published
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Bessemer converter process allows steel to be made quickly and inexpensively
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A pro-slavery mob sacks Lawrence, Kansas; John Brown stages the Pottawatomie Massacre in retaliation
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Charles Sumner of Massachusetts is caned and seriously injured by a pro-slavery congressman in the U.S. Senate
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U.S. Supreme Court issues the Dred Scott decision
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Lecompton Constitution declares that slavery will be allowed in Kansas
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Abraham Lincoln debates Stephen A. Douglas during the 1858 Illinois Senate race
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Construction of New York’s Central Park begins
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John Brown and his followers stage raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to incite a massive slave insurrection
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First oil well is struck in Titusville, Pennsylvania
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Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is published
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Comstock Lode is discovered
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South Carolina secedes from the Union
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Crittenden Compromise is proposed
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Fort Sumter falls to Confederate forces; Lincoln issues call to arms
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First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas)
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The Trent affair commences when a Union warship stops a British ship on the high seas and takes two Confederate agents into custody
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Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated president
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Congress guarantees the construction of a transcontinental railroad
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Congress passes the Morrill Land Grant Act
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Congress passes the Homestead Act
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Congress passes the Homestead Act
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Period: to
Peninsular campaign
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Period: to
Battles of Shiloh, Second Bull Run, and Antietam
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Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation
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Period: to
Siege of Vicksburg, Battles of Gettysburg and Chattanooga
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Lincoln refuses to sign the Wade-Davis Bill
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Sand Creek Massacre
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Thirteenth Amendment is ratified
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Congress sets up the Freedmen’s Bureau
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Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House
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Lincoln is assassinated
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Congress passes the Civil Rights Act
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Ku Klux Klan is organized
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Congress passes the Military Reconstruction Act
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Congress passes the Tenure of Office Act
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Fourteenth Amendment is ratified
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Congress impeaches President Andrew Johnson; the Senate fails to convict him
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First transcontinental railroad is completed at Promontory, Utah
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Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire
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Thomas A. Edison makes the first successful incandescent lightbulb
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Alexander Graham Bell patents his telephone
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Battle of Little Bighorn
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Compromise of 1877 ends Reconstruction
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Great Railroad Strike
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Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated president
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Supreme Court issues Munn v. Illinois decision
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James A. Garfield is assassinated
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John D. Rockefeller organizes the Standard Oil Trust
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Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act
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Congress passes the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
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Surrender of Geronimo marks the end of the Indian wars
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American Federation of Labor is organized
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Supreme Court issues Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois decision
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In the Haymarket incident, a bomb set off at a Chicago labor rally kills and wounds police officers
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Congress passes the Severalty Act
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Interstate Commerce Commission is created
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Otis Elevator Company installs the first electric elevator
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Hull-House, a settlement house, opens in Chicago
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Mississippi Plan resegregates public facilities by race
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Battle of Wounded Knee
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Basketball is invented
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Ellis Island, a federal center for processing immigrants, opens
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People’s party drafts its Omaha platform
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Homestead Strike
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Frederick J. Turner’s “frontier thesis”
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Economic depression affects a substantial proportion of the population
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Pullman Strike
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Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed
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Cuban insurrection breaks out against Spanish rule
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Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromise speech
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Supreme Court issues Plessy v. Ferguson decision
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U.S. battleship Maine explodes in Havana Harbor
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War of 1898
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United States annexes Hawaii
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U.S. Senate ratifies the Treaty of Paris, ending the War of 1898
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Period: to
Filipino insurgents resist U.S. domination
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International alliance quells the Boxer Rebellion
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Baseball’s National League is formed
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Army Yellow Fever Commission confirms the cause of yellow fever
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J. Pierpont Morgan creates the U.S. Steel Corporation
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Theodore Roosevelt attempts to arbitrate the coal strike
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Justice Department breaks up Northern Securities Company
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Panamanians revolt against Colombia
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Congress passes the Elkins Act
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Wright Brothers fly the first airplane
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Ford Motor Company is founded
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Russo-Japanese War
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First movie house opens
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Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is published
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Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act
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Great White Fleet circumnavigates the globe in a demonstration of America’s rise to world-power status
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Great White Fleet circumnavigates the globe in a demonstration of America’s rise to world-power status
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Supreme Court issues Muller v. Oregon decision
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is created
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William Taft is inaugurated president
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded
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Congress passes the Mann-Elkins Act
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Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire
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Congress passes the Federal Reserve Act
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Panama Canal opens
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Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act
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United States intervenes in Mexico
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World War I begins in Europe
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British liner Lusitania, with Americans aboard, is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine
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Congress passes the National Defense Act
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Marcus Garvey brings to New York the Universal Negro Improvement Association
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Louis Brandeis is nominated to fill a seat on the Supreme Court
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United States enters the Great War
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Zimmermann telegram reveals that Germany is attempting to incite Mexico to enter the war against the United States
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Woodrow Wilson delivers his Fourteen Points speech
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Representatives of warring nations sign armistice
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Race riots break out in Chicago
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U.S. attorney general launches Red Scare
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Treaty of Versailles is presented to the Germans
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Supreme Court issues Schenck v. United States decision
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Prohibition begins
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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise is published
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Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women’s suffrage, is ratified
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Joint resolution of Congress officially ends the war among the United States, Germany, and Austria-Hungary
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Representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan attend the Washington Naval Conference
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Albert Einstein receives the Nobel Prize in physics
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Congress passes the Emergency Immigration Act
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First radio commercial is aired
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United States begins sending observers to the League of Nations
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Benito Mussolini comes to power in Italy
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T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is published
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President Warren G. Harding dies in office
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Scopes “monkey trial” tests the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools
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Charles Lindbergh Jr. makes first solo transatlantic flight
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Herbert Hoover is elected president
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More than sixty nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact pledging not to go to war with one another, except in matters of self-defense
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Stock market crashes
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Congress passes the Hawley-Smoot Tariff
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Congress sets up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
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Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act
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Bonus Expeditionary Force converges on Washington to demand payment of bonuses promised to war veterans
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Congress passes the Emergency Banking Relief Act
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Congress passes the Beer-Wine Revenue Act
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Congress creates the Tennessee Valley Authority
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Congress establishes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
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Congress creates the Civil Works Administration
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Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany
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Congress establishes the Civilian Conservation Corps
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President Roosevelt creates the Works Progress Administration
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Congress passes the Wagner Act
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Social Security goes into effect
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Panay incident
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Hitler forces the Anschluss (union) of Austria and Germany
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John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is published
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Soviet Union agrees to a nonaggression pact with Germany
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German troops invade Poland
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Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact
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Richard Wright’s Native Son is published
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Battle of Britain
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Japanese launch surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
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Battle of Midway
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Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff meet at Casablanca
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Allied forces land on Sicily
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Roosevelt and Churchill meet Stalin, in Tehran
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Congress passes the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill of Rights)
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Congress passes the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill of Rights)
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D-day
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Yalta Conference
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies; Hitler commits suicide
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Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Fifty nations at war with the Axis Powers sign the United Nations Charter
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V-E day
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Japanese surrender
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National Security Council (NSC) is established
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Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Labor Act
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Israel is proclaimed an independent nation
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Allied forces begin airlifting supplies to West Berlin
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Truman defeats Dewey in the presidential election
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Truman issues an executive order ending segregation in the U.S. armed forces October
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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is created
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China “falls” to communism
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United States and other UN members go to war in Korea
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Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is published
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Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are executed
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Armistice is reached in Korea
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Supreme Court issues ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
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Geneva Accords adopted
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Period: to
Army-McCarthy hearings are televised
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Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott begins
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In Suez War, Israel, Britain, and France attack Egypt
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Hungarian revolt against the Warsaw Pact is quickly suppressed
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Federal troops ordered to protect students attempting to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas
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Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1
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Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is published
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Baby boom peaks
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U-2 incident reveals that the United States is flying spy planes over the Soviet Union