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Though the United States was founded under democratic principles, only a minority of its population – in the beginning only white landowning males over the age of 21 – could actually vote. But after the 19th Amendment of the Constitution was passed -
President Roosevelt, grappling with the Great Depression, signs into law his signature Social Security Act, a law that creates the country's first retirement security system. -
Under the cover of predawn darkness, a German battleship floats quietly into the center of Danzig Harbor and opens fire on a Polish stronghold in Westerplatte, the first shots of World War II -
Knowing the U.S. is gearing up to engage them in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II, Japan deploys a massive air attack on U.S. Navy ships parked at Pearl Harbor. The surprise assault by 353 Japanese aircraft leads to the deaths of 2,403 people -
The United States successfully detonates its first hydrogen bomb, a second generation thermonuclear device, in the Marshall Islands as part of Operation Ivy, one of a series of nuclear bomb tests -
Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. The arrest of Parks for insisting to remain seated leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott advancing the civil rights cause -
On Aug. 12, 2,400 East Germans cross into West Berlin, the most in a single day. The next day, with the approval of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, East Germany builds a wall that would extend 27 miles through Berlin, dividing families and friends for the next 28 years -
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is fatally shot by James Earl Ray as the civil rights icon stands on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a tragedy that sparks race riots nationwide -
The chemical disaster in Bhopal is still considered history's worst industrial disaster. About 30 tons of methyl isocyanate, an industrial gas used to make pesticide, are released at a Union Carbide Corp. plant. About 600,000 poor residents of nearby shanty towns are exposed to a highly toxic compound that kills about 15,000 people and countless farm animals -
19 hijackers inspired by Islamist extremism kill nearly 3,000 people after crashing three passenger-laden commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center towers