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1492
Christopher Columbus
The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he accidentally stumbled upon the Americas. -
1492
Columbian Exchange
Exchanges of plants, animals, diseases and technology transformed European and Native American ways of life. Beginning after Columbus' discovery in 1492 the exchange lasted throughout the years of expansion and discovery. -
Jun 7, 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas
Treaty of Tordesillas, agreement between Spain and Portugal aimed at settling conflicts over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus and other late 15th-century voyagers. -
1512
Encomienda System established
conquistadors and other leaders (encomenderos) received grants of a number of Indians, from whom they could exact "tribute" in the form of gold or labor. The encomenderos were supposed to protect and Christianize the Indians granted to them, but they most often used the system to effectively enslave the Indians and take their lands. -
1525
Atlantic Slave Trade
The first record of a slave trade voyage direct from Africa to the Americas is for a ship that landed in Santo Domingo. -
1550
The Black Legend
The Black Legend is a style of propaganda that criticizes the Spanish Empire, first described by Julian Juderias in his book, The Black Legend and Historical Truth. The legend infers that no good came of the period of exploration except for the gains of the Spanish. -
1564
Bartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de Las Casas began fighting for Native American rights, lasting until his death in 1564. He worked hard to lead Spanish Monarchs to see the harsh treatment of people in the Americas. Though Casas inspired minor reforms, he gave a voice to the Protestant Reformation. -
James Town
The colony was sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, a group of investors who hoped to profit from the venture.The settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America. Tobacco was Virginia's cash crop, the first Africans had arrived and representative government had been established in Virginia. -
Great Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay
Anne Hutchinson was the defendant in the most famous of the trials intended to squelch religious dissent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had been founded so that the Puritans might perfectly practice their own faith. 1620-1640 -
Half- Way Covenant
Half-Way Covenant, religious-political solution adopted by 17th-century New England Congregationalists, also called Puritans, that allowed the children of baptized but unconverted church members to be baptized and thus become church members and have political rights. -
King's Phillip War
A series of battles in New Hampshire between the colonists and the Wompanoags, led by Metacom, a chief also known as King Philip. In King Philip's War Native Americans tried to stop the settlers of New England from taking their land. colonists won with the help of the Mohawks, and this victory opened up additional Indian lands for expansion.June 1675 – August 1676 -
Pueblo Revolt
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 occurred in the Pueblo Region, which is present day New Mexico. They arrest the pueblo holy men and some of them are put to death. As revenge, Pope (a pueblo man), leads a revolt against the spanish and kill 400 spaniards all together and 35 priests. The spanish are forced to leave the area. -
The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage refers to the part of the trade where Africans, densely packed onto ships, were transported across the Atlantic to the West Indies. -
French and Indian War
Also known as the Seven Years’ War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France. When France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley brought repeated conflict with the claims of the British colonies, a series of battles led to the official British declaration of war in 1756. -
Pontiac's Rebellion
Pontiac's Rebellion was a war waged by Indians of the Great Lakes region against British rule after the French and Indian War. The war was named after Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa tribe. Indians from many tribes including the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Shawnee, Miami, Huron, Seneca and Potawatomi participated in the uprising. -
Proclamation Act
After Britain won the Seven Years' War and gained land in North America, it issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited American colonists from settling west of Appalachia. The Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the French and Indian War, granted Britain a great deal of valuable North American land. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Angry former indentured servants, mostly from West VA resented East planters. They were very poor, lacking wives, had little land, and were squatting in the west of the colony. They were lead by Nathaniel Bacon. They were angered by the lack of response to Indian attacks. They chased Berkely out of town but when Bacon died Berkely crushed the uprising. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the revolutionary war and recognized American independence. The Continental Congress named a five-member commission to negotiate a treaty–John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Laurens. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. -
U.S Constitution
The U.S. Constitution established America's national government and fundamental laws, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. It was signed on September 17, 1787, by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, presided over by George Washington. -
Judiciary Act
One of the first acts of the new Congress was to establish a federal court system in the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Constitution provided that the judicial branch should be composed of one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress from time to time established. -
Second Great Awakening
Religious Transformation and the Second Great Awakening. Both blacks and women began to participate in evangelical revivals associated with the Second Great Awakening at the end of the 18th century. From these revivals grew the roots of the both the feminist and abolitionist movements. -
Missouri Compromise
In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
Erie Canal Completed
Erie Canal was created as New York state canal. This linked Lake Erie to the Hudson River. This canal was significant in that it lowered shipping costs dramatically, and fueled an economic boom in upstate New York and increased the profitability of farming in the Old Northwest. -
Trail of Tears
White settlers wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk thousands of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears. 1838-1839 -
Mormon Migration
(Mormon migration to Utah)The great Mormon migration of 1846-1847 was but one step in the Mormons' quest for religious freedom and growth. The Mormon religion, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was founded by Joseph Smith on April 6, 1830 in Fayette, New York. -
Mexican- American War
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. -
Seneca Falls Convention
The American women's rights movement began with a meeting of reformers in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Out of that first convention came a historic document, the 'Declaration of Sentiments,' which demanded equal social status and legal rights for women, including the right to vote. -
Compromise of 1850
Mexican American War resolved in the Compromise of 1850. It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves. -
Kansas Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30. -
South Carolina succeeded from the Union
With the election in 1860 of Abraham Lincoln, who ran on a message of containing slavery to where it currently existed, and the success of the Republican Party in that election, South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860 -
America Civil War
The war began when the Confederates bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. The war ended in Spring, 1865. Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation 1863. On Jan. 1, 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared free all slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal government. This Emancipation Proclamation freed few people. The states in rebellion did not act on Lincoln's order. -
Sherman's March to Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. -
Freedmen's Bureau
Freedmen's Bureau was established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) assist freed slaves in obtaining relief, land, jobs, fair treatment, and education. -
Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes President. -
Territory of Alaska Purchased
On March 30, 1867, the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. The Treaty with Russia was negotiated and signed by Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl. -
Transcontinental Railroad Completion
On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, signaling the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad had long been a dream for people living in the American West. -
Battle of Little Bighorn
Native American forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, leaders of the Sioux tribe on the Great Plains, strongly resisted the mid-19th-century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to reservations. -
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was a unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. -
Spanish American War
The United States declared war on Spain following the sinking of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. -
Assassination Of William McKinley
President William McKinley was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist son of Polish immigrants. McKinley died eight days later on September 14, 1901. He was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. -
Harlem Renaissance
The New York City neighborhood of Harlem became a major cultural center for African Americans. Black artists, musicians, and writers based in Harlem created a social and artistic community, producing major works and challenging barriers created by Jim Crow. -
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. -
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl or the dirty thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936, caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation or other techniques to prevent erosion. -
Wagner Act
The Wagner Act, or the National Labor Relations Act, was a New Deal reform passed by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 5, 1935. It was instrumental in preventing employers from interfering with workers' unions and protests in the private sector. -
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Japanese navy against the United States' naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii later resulting in the United States becoming militarily involved in World War II. It was intended as a preventive action to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from influencing the war Japan was planning to wage in Southeast Asia against Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. -
Marshall Plan
American initiative to aid Western European countries during the postwar. The US used $13 billion in economic support to rebuild war torn countries. -
Berlin Airlift
U.S. and British pilots begin delivering food and supplies by airplane to Berlin after the city is isolated by a Soviet Union blockade. -
NSC-68
President Harry S. Truman receives National Security Council Paper Number 68 (NSC-68). The result was NSC-68, a report that took four months to compile and was completed in April 1950 that lunched the Cold War. -
Vietnam War
United States' Cold War foreign policy began to play a major part in Vietnam. U.S. policy at the time was dominated by the domino theory, which believed that the “fall” of North Vietnam to Communism might trigger all of Southeast Asia to fall, setting off a sort of Communist chain reaction. -
Space Race
After the successful launch of Sputnik I, the US were afraid of the Soviets controlling space so they launched their own Space Program. Each countries goal was the moon. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
13 day political/military standoff during the 1960s over the installation of nuclear armed Soviet missiles in Cuba. This was just 90 miles off from US shores. A blockade was formed to stop the missiles. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. -
Cotton Gin invented
1794 Eli Whitney created the
cotton gin. This was 50x more effective than
the handpicking process. The cotton
gin caused cotton to be more profitable. -
Iran Hostages released
US citizens were held hostage for 444 days from Nov. 4 1979 - Jan. 20 1981 after the US embassy was taken over by Islamic students and militants. -
Berlin Wall fell
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to dissolve across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
Soviet Union Collapsed
In December of 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. -
Don't Ask Don't Tell
Official United States policy prohibiting military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration. Department of Defense Directive issued on December 21, 1993, took effect, lasting until September 20, 2011. -
NAFTA goes in effect
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. NAFTA is a trade pact between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, eliminated virtually all tariffs and trade restrictions between the three nations. -
Oklahoma City Bombings
The Oklahoma City bombing occurred when a truck packed with explosives was exploded on April 19, 1995, outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The bombing killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured nearly 700 more -
9/11 Terrorist Attack
World Trade Center, and Pentagon attacked by Terrorists, along with a plane crash in Pennsylvania. Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States.
