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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. -
Petition of Right
The Petition of Right is a major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing. -
English Bill of Rights
The English Bill of Rights is an English precursor of the Constitution, along with the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right. The English Bill of Rights limited the power of the English sovereign, and was written as an act of Parliament. -
Albany Plan of Union
A plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government. -
Boston Massacre
The killing of the five colonists. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
Boston Tea Party
The Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party. In 1771, a group of colonists protest thirteen years of increasing British oppression, by attacking merchant ships in Boston Harbor. In retaliation, the British close the port, and inflict even harsher penalties. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the usual name of a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a new nation the United States of America. John Adams was a leader in pushing for independence, which was unanimously approved on July 2. -
Articles of Confederation
Document signed amonst the thirteen colonies that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as it's first constitution. -
Shay's Rebelliion
Shays ' Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in Massachusetts during 1786 and 1787, which some historians believe "fundamentally altered the course of United States' history." -
Philadelphia Convention
took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. Although the Convention was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. -
Virginia Plan
The Virginia Plan (also known as the Randolph Plan, after its sponsor, or the Large-State Plan) was a proposal by Virginia delegates for a bicameral legislative branch. The plan was drafted by James Madison while he waited for a quorum to assemble at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. -
New Jersey Plan
The New Jersey Plan (also widely known as the Small State Plan or the Paterson Plan) was a proposal for the structure of the United States Government presented by William Paterson at the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 1787. -
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. -
World War I
World War I was a global war centered in Europe. More than 9 million combantants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war. -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in 1930 and lasted until the late 1930s or middle 1940s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. -
World War II
It was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, though related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the world's nations including all of the great powers. -
Martin Luther King Jr
Dr. King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. -
Nelson Mandela
was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation.
