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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
The Magna Carta is a charter agreed by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor. -
Jamestown
America's first permanesnt English Colony, it was sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, a group of investors who hoped to profit from the venture. -
The Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact, signed by 41 English colonists on the ship Mayflower on November 11, 1620, was the first written framework of government established in what is now the United States. -
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 1689 English Bill of Rights was a British Law, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1689 that declared the rights and liberties of the people. -
Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a proposal to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin and a delegate from Pennsylvania, at the Albany Congress in July 1754 in Albany, New York. -
Stamp Act
An act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the British Crown. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. Tea was thrown into the Boston Harbor as a stand against the King. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts was the American Patriots' name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. -
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. -
America Revolution (Beginning)
The battle of Lexington started and was closely followed by the battle of Concord. The shot at Lexington marked the first blood spilled in the war of American Independence. -
The 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 statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 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. -
Articles OF Confederation
The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777. This document was the United States first constitution until it was replaced by our current. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. -
Philadelphia Convention
In September 1786, at the Annapolis Convention, delegates from five states called for a constitutional convention in order to discuss possible improvements to the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional convention took place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787. -
Connecticut Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have. -
Constitution Convention
The Constitution Convention took place from May 25th to September 17th to discuss the problems governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation.
