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William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American orator and politician from Nebraska. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, standing three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States. He also served in the United States House of Representatives and as the United States Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, he was often called "The Great Commoner". Bryan won the presidential in 1900. -
Homestead Acts
The Homestead Acts were several United States laws that gave an people ownership of land, typically called a "homestead," at no cost. More than 270 million acres of public land, or nearly 10% of the total area of the U.S., was given away for free to 1.6 million homesteaders. Most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River. Any adult who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible. -
Morrill Land-Grant college Acts
The Land Grant College Act was to boost a higher education in America. The grant was originally set up to establish institutions in each state that would educate people in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and professions that were practical at the time. The land-grant act was introduced by a congressman named Justin Smith Morrill. He saw the financing of agricultural and mechanical education. He wanted to assure that education would be available to those in all social classes. -
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian para-church and an international charitable organization structured in a military fashion. The organization reports a membership of over 1.5 million, adherents known as Salvationists. Its founders Catherine and William Booth sought to bring salvation to the poor, destitute and hungry by meeting both their "physical and spiritual needs". It is present in 128 countries, running charity shops, operating shelters for the homeless and disaster relief. -
Indian Appropriations Acts
The Indian Appropriations Act was part of President Grant’s Peace Policy. This act specify that the US would stop treating Plains Indians as an independent nation, tribe, or power. The act said that Plains Indians should be treated as wards of the state. A ward is a child who is put under the care of an guardian. This act suggested that Plains Indians needed to be cared for as if they were children. Bill made it easier for the government to secure lands that were previously owned by Natives. -
Red River War
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Native American tribes from the Southern Plains and relocate them to reservations in Indian Territory. It lasted only a few months, the war had several army columns crisscross the Texas Panhandle in an effort to locate, harass, and capture highly mobile Indian bands. Most of the encounters were small in which neither side suffered many casualties. -
Battle of Little Big Horn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn pitted federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer against Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Tensions between them had been rising since the discovery of gold on Native American lands. The U.S. Army was dispatched to confront them. Custer was unaware of the number of Indians fighting under the command of Sitting Bull and his forces were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed in what became known as Custer’s Last Stand. -
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt was an American business man who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. He was born poor and had a not very good education, Vanderbilt used perseverance, intelligence, and luck to work his way into leadership positions in the inland water trade and invest in the rapidly growing railroad industry. He is known for owning the New York Central Railroad. One of the richest Americans in history Vanderbilt was the leader of a wealthy influential family. -
Phonograph
The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an up and down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements and introduced the graphophone. -
John Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist. He entered the oil business by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio, refinery. He established Standard Oil, which controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. Critics accused Rockefeller of engaging in unethical practices, such as predatory pricing and colluding with railroads to eliminate his competitors, in order to gain a monopoly in the industry. -
Chinese Exclusive Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States law signed by President Chester A. Arthur prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law restricting immigration into the United States. The people in the West Coast were especially affected by the declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Congress passed the exclusion act to calm worker demands and make less tense prevalent concerns about maintaining white “racial purity.” -
Pendleton Act
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a federal law, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation. The act provided the selection of government employees by competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation. It also made it illegal to fire or demote government officials for political reasons and prohibited soliciting campaign donations on Federal government property. -
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody opened Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show on May 19, 1883 at Omaha, Nebraska. His partner was a dentist and exhibition shooter, Dr. W.F. Carver. Cody and Carver took the show, subtitled Rocky Mountain across the world. The shows introduced many western performers and personalities, and a romanticized version of the American frontier, to a wide audience with many different members. By the twentieth century Cody was known as the greatest showman on the face of the earth. -
Great Upheaval of 1886
The Great Southwest railroad strike of 1886 was a labor union strike involving more than 200,000 workers.Railroad workers in five states struck against the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroads. At least ten people were killed.The unraveling strike within two months led directly to the collapse of the Knights of Labor and the formation of the American Federation of Labor. This strike finally ended some 45 days later, after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops. -
Haymarket Riot
a labor protest rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. Eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Eight labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing. The Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for rights in work place. At the same time, the men convicted in connection with the riot were viewed by many in the labor movement as martyrs. -
Coca Cola
Coca-Cola began in 1886 when Atlanta pharmacist, Dr. John S. Pemberton, led him to create a distinctive tasting soft drink that could be sold at soda fountains. He created a flavored syrup, took it to his neighborhood pharmacy, where it was mixed with carbonated water and seemed excellent by those who sampled it. Dr. Pemberton’s partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, is credited with naming the beverage “Coca‑Cola” as well as designing the trademarked, distinct script. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the President of the US to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. The objectives of the Act were to abolish rights of Native Americans in order to stimulate assimilation of them into American society, to transfer lands under Indian control to white settlers, and lift Native Americans out of poverty. -
Kodak Camera
Kodak was founded by George Eastman and Henry A. Strong on September 4, 1888. George Eastman invented flexible roll film and in 1888 introduced the Kodak camera shown to use this film. It took 100-exposure rolls of film that gave circular images. In 1888 the original Kodak sold for $25 loaded with a roll of film and included a leather carrying case. Kodak followed the razor and blades strategy of selling cheap cameras and making large margins from consumables – film, chemicals and paper. -
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist and business magnate. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th and is often identified as one of the richest people. He became a leading philanthropist in the United States and in the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away about $350 million to charities, foundations, and universities. His article "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act was named after senator John Sherman. The purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act was to maintain free competition in business and made it a crime to monopolize any part of trade or commerce. It allowed certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be competitive, and recommended the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts. a trust is a centuries-old legal arrangement where one party conveys property to a trustee to hold for a heir. -
Silver Act
Years of falling prices and economic contraction gave rise to a strongly silver wing of the Democratic Party. These "silver Democrats" advocated the notion that the free coinage of silver would combat deflation and promote economic expansion, particularly for hard-pressed farmers in the South and West, a core constituency of the Democratic Party. Most Republicans staunchly supported the gold standard as the basis of the national currency. -
People's Party/Populist Party
The People's Party, also known as the Populist Party or the Populists, was a political party in the United States. It played a major role as a left-wing force in American politics. It was merged into the Democratic Party in 1896; a small independent remnant survived until 1908. It drew support from angry farmers in the West and South. It was highly critical of banks and railroads and allied itself with the labor movement. the People's Party reached its peak in the 1892 presidential election. -
World's Columbian Exposition 1893
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival to the Americas. The centerpiece of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago bested other cities for hosting the fair. The Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had an effect on architecture, sanitation, the arts, and American industrial optimism. -
The Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States. It deeply affected the economy and produced political upheaval that led to the realigning election of 1896 and the presidency of William McKinley. The nation’s gold reserve had been steadily declining during the last years of the Harrison administration. The spending of the “Billion Dollar Congress" and the gold drain caused by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act were the prime factors of the surplus reduction. -
World's Columbian Exposition 1893
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.The main attention of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago was the honor of hosting. The Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture, sanitation, the arts, Chicago's self-image, and American industrial optimism. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between whites and blacks did not conflict. -
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by about 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region north-western Canada. Gold was discovered there by local miners, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy but the majority didn't gain anything from the travel. It has been immortalized in photographs, books, films, and artifacts. It is the last Great gold rush and it made many quit their jobs to get wealthy with the gold they could find. -
Election of 1896
United States presidential election of 1896, American presidential election held on November 3, 1896, in which Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat-Populist William Jennings Bryan. The central issue was the country’s money supply. An economic depression had begun in 1893, and public opinion—and even the Democratic Party—was split between those who favored the gold standard and those who favored free silver, a type of currency inflation, to help alleviate the depression. -
William McKinley
William McKinley was the 25th President of the United States, from 1897, until his assassination in 1901, six months into his second term. McKinley led the nation to victory in the Spanish–American War, raised protective tariffs to promote American industry, and maintained the nation on the gold standard in a rejection of inflationary proposals. McKinley was the last president to have served in the American Civil War beginning as a private in the Union Army and ending as a brevet major. -
George Dewey
George Dewey was Admiral of the Navy, the only person in United States history to have attained the rank. He is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish–American War. Dewey entered the Naval Academy. He graduated from the academy and was assigned as the executive lieutenant of the USS Mississippi at the beginning of the Civil War. He participated in the Capture of New Orleans and the Siege of Port Hudson, helping the Union take control of the Mississippi River. -
Rough Riders
The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish–American War. The United States Army was small and understaffed in comparison to its status during the American Civil War roughly thirty years prior. President William McKinley called upon 125,000 volunteers to assist in the war efforts. This nickname served to acknowledge that despite being a cavalry unit they ended up fighting on foot. -
Treaty of Paris (1898)
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 was an agreement that involved Spain relinquishing nearly all of the remaining Spanish Empire, especially Cuba, and ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. The session of the Philippines involved a payment of $20 million from the United States to Spain. The treaty was signed on December 10, 1898, and ended the Spanish–American War. The Treaty of Paris came into effect on April 11, 1899, when the documents of ratification were exchanged. -
Emilio Aguinaldo
Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy was a Filipino revolutionary, politician, and a military leader who is officially recognized as the first and the youngest President of the Philippines and first president of a constitutional republic in Asia. He led Philippine forces first against Spain in the latter part of the Philippine Revolution, and then in the Spanish–American War, and finally against the United States during the Philippine–American War. He was captured in Palanan, Isabela by American forces. -
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement was a violent anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising that took place in China between 1899 and 1901, toward the end of the Qing dynasty. It was initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness for many of their members had been practitioners of Chinese martial arts, also referred to in the west as "Chinese Boxing." They were motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments, and by opposition to Western colonialism. -
Teddy Roosevelt
The young Republican Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th president of the U.S. after the assassination of William McKinley. He brought a new energy to the White House. Roosevelt confronted the struggle between labor and became known as the great “trust buster” for his efforts to break up industrial combinations under the Sherman Antitrust Act. He was also a dedicated conservationist, setting aside some 200 million acres for national forests, reserves and wildlife refuges during his presidency. -
Teddy Bear
A teddy bear is a soft toy in the form of a bear. Developed by toymakers Morris Michtom in the U.S. and Richard Steiff in Germany in the early years of the 20th century, and named after President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, the teddy bear became an iconic children's toy, celebrated in story, song, and film. Since the creation of the first teddy bears which imitate the form of real bear cubs, "teddies" have greatly varied.They have become collector's items. -
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo–Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for its navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, was operational all year. -
Meat Inspection Act
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 is an American law that makes it a crime to misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions.These requirements also apply to imported meat products, which must be inspected under foreign standards. USDA inspection of poultry was added by the Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957. The Agricultural Marketing Act authorizes the USDA to offer voluntarily. -
Square Deal
The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program. Roosevelt reflected three basic goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection These three demands are often referred to as the "three C's" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. Thus, it aimed at helping middle-class citizens and involved attacking plutocracy and bad trusts while at the same time protecting the business from the most extreme demands of organized labor. -
Bull Moose Party
The nickname given by newspapers to the Progressive Party, founded by progressive Republicans who bolted the GOP convention to protest the regular party's "standpatism" and the usurpation of progressive presidential electors. The "Bull Moose" tag was an obvious reference to Theodore Roosevelt, the party's leader and presidential candidate. When shot by an assassin weeks before the 1912 election, Roosevelt spoke engagement, saying "it takes more than that to kill a bull moose." -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act created a system of private and public entities. There were to be at least eight and no more than twelve private regional Federal Reserve banks. Twelve were established, and each had various branches, a board of directors, and district boundaries. The Federal Reserve Board, consisting of seven members, was created as the governing body of the Fed. Each member is appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Act was signed by President Woodrow. -
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria ) was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia and, from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia. This caused the Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) and Serbia's allies to declare war on each other, starting World War I. -
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was a proponent of Black nationalism in Jamaica and especially the United States. He was a leader of a mass movement called Pan-Africanism and he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Although most American Black leaders condemned his methods, Garvey attracted a large following. -
Panama Canal
Following the failure of a French construction team, the United States commenced building a canal across a 50-mile stretch of the Panama isthmus in 1904. While chief engineer John Stevens devised innovative techniques and spurred the crucial redesign from a sea-level to a lock canal. His successor, Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals, stepped up efforts of a stubborn mountain range and oversaw the building of the dams and locks. Opened in 1914, oversight of the world-famous Panama Canal. -
Central Powers
The Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria was one of the two main factions during World War I. It faced and was defeated by the Allied Powers that had formed around the Triple Entente. The Powers' origin was the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879. The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria did not join until after World War I had begun, although the Ottoman Empire retained close relations with both Germany and Austria-Hungary. -
Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmermann Telegram was a secret diplomatic issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. The revelation of the contents enraged American public opinion, especially after Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram and helped generate support for the United States declaration of war. -
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism. Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother. -
Espionage Act
Some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I against Germany, the United States Congress passes the Espionage Act. Enforced largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage Act essentially made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies. -
Mustard Gas
Although the use of toxic chemicals as weapons dates back thousands of years, the first large scale use of chemical weapons was during World War I. They were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally very slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective. The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas. -
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was a businessman, politician, and newspaper publisher who built the largest newspaper chain and media company Hearst Communications and whose methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation. After being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. He acquired The New York Journal and fought a bitter war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that sold papers by giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, and innuendo. -
14 Points
The Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on January 8, 1918, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I. Wilson’s proposal called for the victorious Allies to set unselfish peace terms with the vanquished Central Powers of World War I, including freedom of the seas, the restoration of territories conquered during the war. -
Royal Air force (RAF)
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's aerial warfare force. Formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world. Following the victory over the Central Powers in 1918, the RAF emerged as, at the time, the largest air force in the world. Since its formation, the RAF has taken a significant role in British military history. It played a large part in the Second World War where it fought its most famous campaign. -
Albert Fall
Albert Bacon Fall was a United States Senator from New Mexico and the Secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding, infamous for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal. As a member of President Harding’s corruption-ridden cabinet in the early 1920s, Hall accepted a $100,000 interest-free “loan” from Edward Doheny of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, who wanted Fall to grant his firm a valuable oil lease in the Elk Hills naval oil reserve in California. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. -
Al Capone
Born in 1899 in Brooklyn, New York, to poor immigrant parents, Al Capone went on to become the most infamous gangster in American history. In 1920 during the height of Prohibition, Capone’s multi-million dollar Chicago operation in bootlegging, prostitution and gambling dominated the organized crime scene. Capone was responsible for many brutal acts of violence, mainly against other gangsters. The most famous of these was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. -
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo, Satch, and Pops, was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. With his instantly recognizable gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. -
18th Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal. The separate Volstead Act set down methods for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment and defined which liquors were prohibited. The Amendment was the first to set a time delay before it would take effect following ratification. President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bill, but the House of Representatives overrode the veto. -
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. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage ending almost a century of protest. In 1848 the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement. These groups finally emerged victorious with the passage of the 19th Amendment. -
Pancho Villa
Francisco "Pancho" Villa was a Mexican Revolutionary general and one of a prominent figures of the Mexican Revolution. As commander of the División del Norte in the Constitutionalist Army, he was a military-landowner of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Given the area's size and mineral wealth, it provided him with extensive resources. Villa was also provisional Governor of Chihuahua. Villa can be credited with decisive military victories leading to the ousting of Victoriano Huerta. -
Warren Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th president of the United States from March 4, 1921, until his death in 1923. At the time of his death, Harding was one of the most popular presidents, but the subsequent exposure of scandals that took place under his administration such as Teapot Dome eroded his popular regard, as did revelations of an affair by Nan Britton, one of his mistresses. In historical rankings of the U.S. Presidents, Harding is often rated among the worst. -
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850 – November 9, 1924) was an American Republican Congressman and historian from Massachusetts. A member of the prominent Lodge family, he received his PhD in history from Harvard University. He is best known for his positions on foreign policy, especially his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles. The failure of that treaty ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act, was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States as of the 1890 census, down from the 3% cap set by the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which used the Census of 1910. The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration. -
American Indian Citizenship Act
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 was proposed by Representative Homer P. Snyder granting full U.S. citizenship to the Native people of the US. While the 14th Amendment defined as citizens any person born in the U.S., the amendment had been interpreted to restrict the citizenship rights of most Native people. The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge. It was enacted in recognition of the thousands of Indians who served in the armed forces during World War. -
Sandford Dole
Sanford Ballard Dole was a lawyer and jurist in the Hawaiian Islands as a kingdom, protectorate, republic, and territory. A descendant of the American missionary community in Hawaii, Dole advocated the westernization of Hawaiian government and culture. After the overthrow of the monarchy, he served as the President of the Republic of Hawaii until his government secured Hawaii's annexation by the United States.He was nursed by a native Hawaiian. -
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, explorer, and environmental activist. At age 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize: making a nonstop flight from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, to Paris, France. This was the first solo transatlantic flight and the first non-stop flight between North America and mainland Europe. Lindbergh was an officer in the U.S. Army. -
Model T
The Model T, also known as the “Tin Lizzie,” changed the way Americans live, work and travel. Henry Ford’s revolutionary advancements in assembly-line automobile manufacturing made the Model T the first car to be affordable for a majority of Americans. For the first time, car ownership became a reality for average American workers, not just the wealthy. More than 15 million Model Ts were built was also assembled at a Ford plant in Manchester, England, and at plants in continental Europe. -
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover, America’s 31st president, took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression. Although his predecessors’ policies undoubtedly contributed to the crisis, which lasted over a decade, Hoover bore much of the blame in the minds of the American people. As the Depression deepened, Hoover failed to recognize the severity of the situation or leverage the power of the federal government to squarely address it. A successful mining engineer. -
Black Tuesday
Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression. The U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion. -
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The name originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan, and a plaque exists on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it.The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885. -
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions. -
Abram Smith
Abraham S. Smith was African American man who was lynched after being taken from jail and beaten by a mob. They had been arrested that night as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. A third African American suspect, 16-year-old James Cameron, had also been arrested and narrowly escaped being killed by the mob; he was helped by the intervention of an unknown woman and returned to jail. He was later convicted and sentenced as an accessory before the fact. -
Election of 1932
The United States presidential election of 1932 was the thirty-seventh quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1932. The election took place against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Governor of New York. The election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans. -
National Social-German Workers' Party (NAZI)
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers’ Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I and required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations. -
The Holocaust
historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s final solution was Holocaust. -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century. Roosevelt directed the United States federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the Depression. -
The New Deal
The New Deal was a series of federal programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations enacted in the United States during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. Some of these federal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, the Farm Security Administration, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Social Security Administration. These programs included support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly. -
Glass-Stegall Act
The Glass–Steagall legislation describes four provisions of the U.S. Banking Act of 1933 separating commercial and investment banking.The article 1933 Banking Act describes the entire law, including the legislative history of the provisions covered here. The separation of commercial and investment banking prevented securities firms and investment banks from taking deposits, and commercial Federal Reserve member banks from: dealing in non-governmental securities for customers. -
Exchange Act
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is a law governing the secondary trading of securities in the United States of America. A landmark of wide-ranging legislation, the Act of '34 and related statutes form the basis of regulation of the financial markets and their participants in the United States. The 1934 Act also established the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency primarily responsible for enforcement of United States federal securities law. -
Social Security Act
The Social Security Act of 1935 created Social Security in the United States and is relevant for US labor law. It created a basic right to a pension in old age and insurance against unemployment.
In the Second New Deal, the Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. The act laid the groundwork for the modern welfare system in the United States, with its primary focus to provide aid for the elderly, the unemployed, and children. -
Neutrality Acts
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act, or Senate Joint Resolution No. 173, which he calls an “expression of the desire…to avoid any action which might involve [the U.S.] in war.” The signing came at a time when newly installed fascist governments in Europe were beginning to beat the drums of war. In a public statement that day, Roosevelt said that the new law would require American vessels to obtain a license to carry arms. -
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film. Widely considered to be one of the greatest films in cinema history, it is the best-known and most commercially successful adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It stars Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, alongside Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton, with Charley Grapewin, Pat Walshe and Clara Blandick, Terry, and the Singer Midgets as the Munchkins -
Blitzkrieg
A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery. German forces tried out the blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 before successfully employing the tactic with invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France in 1940. -
Hitler
Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party, was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take absolute power in Germany beginning in 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II, and by 1941 Nazi forces had occupied much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews. -
Axis Powers
The Axis powers, also known as the Axis and the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, were the nations that fought in World War II against the Allied forces. The Axis powers agreed on their opposition to the Allies, but did not completely coordinate their activity.The Axis grew out of the diplomatic efforts of Germany, Italy, and Japan to secure their own specific expansionist interests in the mid-1930s. The first step was the treaty signed by Germany and Italy in October 1936. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, and was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. -
Allied Power (WWI)
The Allies of World War I were the countries that opposed the Central Powers in the First World War. The members of the original Triple Entente of 1907 were the French Republic, the British Empire, and the Russian Empire. Italy ended its alliance with the Central Powers, arguing that Germany and Austria-Hungary started the war without prior consultation with all allies and that the alliance was only defensive in nature; it entered the war on the side of the Entente in 1915. -
Executive Order 9066
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas “as deemed necessary or desirable.” The military, in turn, defined the entire West Coast, home to the majority of Americans of Japanese ancestry or citizenship, as a military area. By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to remote internment camps built by the U.S. military in scattered locations around the country. -
D-Day
During World War II, the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history. -
Battle Of the Bulge
In December 1944, Adolph Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. As the Germans drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge, giving rise to the battle’s name.
