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American Revolution began/end
The American Revolution was a rebellion and political revolution in the Thirteen Colonies, which saw colonists initiate a war for independence against the Kingdom of Great Britain. -
Declaration of Independence was ratified
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. -
The US Constitution was ratified
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. -
Louisiana Purchase was made
In this transaction with France, signed on April 30, 1803, the United States purchased 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. -
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American Civil War (beginning and end)
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 -
Abraham Lincoln is assassinated
On the morning of April 14, 1865 (Good Friday), actor John Wilkes Booth learned President Abraham Lincoln would attend a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin that night at Ford’s Theatre—a theatre Booth frequently performed at. He realized his moment had arrived. -
Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell successfully received a patent for the telephone and secured the rights to the discovery. Days later, he made the first ever telephone call to his partner, Thomas Watson. -
Thomas Edison perfects the lightbulb
But it wasn't until more than a year later, on the morning of October 22 (after working all through the day of October 21, 1879) that Thomas Alva Edison and his team finally “perfected” the incandescent light bulb. -
The Wright Brothers invent the airplane
Wilbur and Orville Wright spent four years of research and development to create the first successful powered airplane, the 1903 Wright Flyer. It first flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, with Orville at the controls. -
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world war one
World War I, also known as the Great War, started in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. -
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The Red Scare
From that moment Senator McCarthy became a tireless crusader against Communism in the early 1950s, a period that has been commonly referred to as the "Red Scare." As chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated. -
Great Depression begins
The Depression was the longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy. The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the economic expansion of the Roaring Twenties came to an end. A series of financial crises punctuated the contraction. -
World War II begins
World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the world, and it set the foundation for the international order for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The United Nations was established to foster international cooperation and prevent conflicts, with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. -
Pearl Harbor
While there were historical precedents for the unannounced military action by Japan, the lack of any formal warning, as required by the Hague Convention of 1907, and the perception that the attack had been unprovoked, led then President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the opening line of his speech to a Joint Session of Congress the following day, to famously label December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". -
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki/WWII ends
Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan and invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria. The Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September, effectively ending the war. -
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The Cold War
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, that started in 1947 after the end of World War II and lasted to 1991. -
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the Korean war
The Korean war began on June 25, 1950, when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. -
911
The enduring power of the Sept. 11 attacks is clear: An overwhelming share of Americans who are old enough to recall the day remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.