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1492
Christopher Colombus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. -
Period: 1492 to
The Colombian Exchange
The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to European colonization and trade following Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage. -
Period: 1492 to 1506
Colombus's four voyages
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. -
Period: 1519 to 1521
Cortes conquers the Aztecs
The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, led by Hernando Cortes, was a landmark victory for the European settlers. Following the Spanish arrival in Mexico, a huge battle erupted between the army of Cortes and the Aztec people under the rule of Montezuma. -
Period: to
Roanoke Island colony fails
Less than a year after Raleigh brought colonists over from England to settle on Roanoke Island, the colony failed because the Englishmen simply did not know how to survive on their own in the New World. -
William Bradford
William Bradford was an English Puritan separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England. He moved to Leiden in Holland in order to escape persecution from King James I of England, and then emigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. -
Roger Williams
Roger Williams was a Puritan minister, theologian, and author who founded the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He was a staunch advocate for religious freedom, separation of church and state, and fair dealings with American Indians, and he was one of the first abolitionists. -
Jamestown, Virginia founded
In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13 they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named after their King, James I. -
Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer and navigator during the early 17th century, best known for his explorations of present-day Canada and parts of the northeastern United States. -
First Africans arrive in Virginia
Virginia's first Africans arrived at Point Comfort, on the James River , late in August 1619. There, "20. and odd Negroes" from the English ship White Lion were sold in exchange for food and some were transported to Jamestown, where they were sold again, likely into slavery . -
Virginia House of Burgesses formed
After his arrival in Jamestown in 1619, Governor George Yeardley immediately gave notice that the Virginia colony would establish a legislative assembly. This assembly, the House of Burgesses, first met on July 30, 1619. -
Pilgrims found Plymouth, MA
Plymouth Colony First colonial settlement in New England (founded 1620). The settlers were a group of about 100 Puritan Separatist Pilgrims, who sailed on the Mayflower and settled on what is now Cape Cod bay, Massachusetts. -
The Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the male passengers of the Mayflower, consisting of separatist Puritans, adventurers, and tradesmen. -
John Winthrop
John Winthrop was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of immigrants from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. -
Puritan migration to MA
The Puritan migration to New England was marked in its effects in the two decades from 1620 to 1640, after which it declined sharply for a time. The term Great Migration usually refers to the migration in this period of English Puritans to Massachusetts and the West Indies, especially Barbados. -
Calverts found Maryland
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, applied to Charles I for a royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. After Calvert died in April 1632, the charter for "Maryland Colony" (in Latin Terra Mariae) was granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. -
Period: to
Pequot War
The Pequot War was an armed conflict that took place between 1635 and 1637 in New England between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of the colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies from the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. -
Anne Winthrop
Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan spiritual adviser, mother of 15, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. -
Anne Hutchinson convicted of heresy
Hutchinson refused to recant and accepted her exile. Then Anne Hutchinson essentially convicted herself. She declared that her knowledge of the truth came as direct revelation from God, a heresy in Puritan Massachusetts. -
Fundamental Orders of CT
The Fundamental Orders were adopted by the Connecticut Colony council on January 14, 1639 OS (January 24, 1639 NS). The fundamental orders describe the government set up by the Connecticut River towns, setting its structure and powers. -
Period: to
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers") over, principally, the manner of England's governance. -
William Penn
William Penn was the son of Sir William Penn, and was an English nobleman, writer, early Quaker, and founder of the English North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. -
Nathaniel Bacon
Nathaniel Bacon was a colonist of the Virginia Colony, famous as the instigator of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, which collapsed when Bacon himself died from dysentery. -
First Navigation Act
In October of 1651, the English Parliament passed its Navigation Acts of 1651. These acts were designed to tighten the government's control over trade between England, its colonies, and the rest of the world. -
English conquer New Netherlands → NY
In 1664, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch re-conquered Manhattan with an invasion force of some 600 men. -
Period: to
King Philip's (Metacomet) War
King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–76 between Indian inhabitants of the New England region of North America versus New England colonists and their Indian allies -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. -
Pennsylvania settled
On March 4, 1681, Charles II of England granted the Province of Pennsylvania to William Penn to settle a debt of £16,000 (around £2,100,000 in 2008, adjusting for retail inflation) that the king owed to Penn's father. -
English Glorious Revolution and Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights, also known as the English Bill of Rights, is an Act of the Parliament of England that sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown. -
Salem witch hunts
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused, nineteen of whom were found guilty and executed by hanging. -
William III and Mary II
King William III and Queen Mary II of England signed the charter for a "perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences" to be founded in the Virginia Colony. And William & Mary was born. -
Period: to
Queen Anne's War
Queen Anne's War was the North American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession, as known in the British colonies, and the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought between France and England in North America for control of the continent. The War of the Spanish Succession was primarily fought in Europe. -
England, Wales, and Scotland unite into the UK
The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. -
Period: to
George I's reign
George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698 until his death. -
Period: to
George II's reign
George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 (O.S.) until his death in 1760. -
Period: to
First Great Awakening
The First Great Awakening (sometimes Great Awakening) or the Evangelical Revival was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its Thirteen Colonies between the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Protestantism as adherents strove to renew individual piety and religious devotion. -
John Peter Zenger trial
Zenger printed The New York Weekly Journal. He was accused of libel in 1734 by William Cosby, the royal governor of New York, but the jury acquitted Zenger, who became a symbol for freedom of the press. -
Stono Rebellion, NC
The Stono Rebellion was a slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, with 25 white people and 35 to 50 black people killed. -
Period: to
King George's War
King George's War is the name given to the operations in North America that formed part of the 1744–1748 War of the Austrian Succession. It was the third of the four French and Indian Wars. -
Albany Congress
The Albany Congress was a meeting of representatives sent by the legislatures of seven of the thirteen British colonies in British America: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. -
Georgia founded
James Edward Oglethorpe, a philanthropist and an English general, along with twenty-one other men, created a charter to settle a new colony which they named Georgia in honor of King George II.
