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Jan 29, 1215
Magna Carta
Magna Carta, meaning 'The Great Charter', is one of the most famous documents in the world. Originally issued by King John of England as a practical solution to the political crisis he faced in 1215, Magna Carta established for the first time principle that everybody, including the king, was subject to law. -
Jamestown Settled
The founding of Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony, in Virginia in 1607 – 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in Massachusetts – sparked a series of cultural encounters that helped shape the nation and the world. The government, language, customs, beliefs and aspirations of these early Virginians are all part of the United States’ heritage today. -
Mayflower Compact Written
The "Mayflower Compact" was signed on 11 November 1620 onboard the Mayflower shortly after she came to anchor off Provincetown Harbor. The Pilgrims had obtained permission from English authorities to settle in Virginia, whose northern border at the time extended up to what is now New York. -
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 act that the Parliament of England passed on December 16, 1689. The Bill creates separation of powers, limits the powers of the king and queen, enhances the democratic election and bolsters freedom of speech. -
Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin. -
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 astreet fight that occured 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. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston. -
Intollerable Acts
The Intollerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston Harbor. -
First Continental Congress
The First Coninental 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 convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that, soon after warfare, declared 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, and no longer a part of the British Empire. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independance from Great Britain. -
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. -
Constitution Convection
A meeting in 1787 in which the constitution was written. -
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 under the United States Constitution. -
Philadelphia Convention
The Philadelphia Convention, also known as the Constitutional Convetion, took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787. Although, the convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of its proponents were to create a new government rather than fixing the existing one. -
American Revolution Begins
At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shotheard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun.
