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William McKinley
25th president was assinated, ending his term in office. -
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Theodore Roosevelt's
26th president -
First Nobel Prizes Awarded
A pacifist at heart and an inventor by nature, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite. Not wanting to go down in history for creating such a deadly device, Nobel created a will that left the bulk of his fortune to the establishment of five prizes (physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace). On December 10, 1901, five years after Alfred Nobel's death, the first five Nobel Prizes were awarded. -
Wright Brothers
Wright Brothers fly the first airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina -
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Russian Revolution
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Henry Ford
First Model T automobile was sold. -
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William Howard Taft
27th president -
Mona Lisa Is Stolen
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world, was stolen right off the wall of the Louvre. The crime was inconceivable and the police had no leads. The Mona Lisa turned up in Italy two years later. -
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Woodrow Wilson's
28th president -
Personal Income Tax Introduced in U.S.
Once the 16th Amendment was passed, the U.S. government passed its first, permanent income tax law in October 1913. -
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world war 1
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The Spanish Flu Pandemic
the garden-variety flu mutated into a deadly virus. This new, lethal virus, which became known as the Spanish flu, swept around the world in three waves, killing an estimated 50 million to 100 million people (the equivalent to 2.7 to 5.5 percent of the world's population). -
Prohibition Begins in the U.S.
Beginning in the 19th century, many people, especially women, blamed many of society's problems upon alcohol. With the hope of bettering society, organizations were formed to advocate against the consumption of alcohol. By the beginning of the 20th century, many states had already created state laws banning alcohol. On January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Exactly one year later (January 16, 1920), this Amendment went into affect, making the manufacture, sal -
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Warren G. Harding
29th president -
Tomb of King Tut Discovered
while clearing away some ancient huts, one of Howard Carter's workmen found a hidden step near the base of the tomb of Rameses VI. Though he hoped it led to an ancient, royal tomb, it could just as easily have been a royal cache or, much worse, empty - pilfered in antiquity. But that was not to be. Carter had discovered not just an unknown ancient Egyptian tomb, but one that had lain nearly undisturbed for over 3,000 years. Pharoah Tutankhamun, the boy king, was found within his nearly intact to -
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Calvin Coolidge
30th president -
Penicillin Discovered
bacteriologist Alexander Fleming found a mold had contaminated one of his experiments. To his surprise, the mold was an antibacterial agent that could kill many harmful bacteria. He named the active agent, penicillin. -
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Herbert Hoover
31st president -
Pluto Discovered
Clyde W. Tombaugh, an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. For over seven decades, Pluto was considered the ninth planet of our solar system. -
Assassination Attempt on Franklin D. Roosevelt
President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt had just sat down after giving a speech at the Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida when five shots rang out. Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant and unemployed bricklayer, had emptied his .32 caliber pistol while aiming the best he could at FDR while standing on a wobbly chair about 25 feet away. Although none of the shots hit FDR, Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak was mortally hit in the stomach and four others received minor injuries. -
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Franklin D. Roosevelt
32nd. president -
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Spanish Civil war
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Broadcast of The War of the Worlds Causes Panic
Before there was television, people used to turn on their radios to listen to music, hear talk programs, and to get news. On Sunday, October 30, 1938, millions of radio listeners turned on their radios and heard realistic sounding descriptions of an attack of Martians on the United States. -
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world war II
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Attack on Pearl Harbor
the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. After just two hours of bombing, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, 21 ships* had either been sunk or damaged, and more than 188 U.S. aircraft destroyed. -
D-Day
the United States and the United Kingdom (with help from many other western countries) began the long-awaited attack from the west, the Normandy Invasion (Operation Overlord). June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, was the very first day of this massive amphibious invasion, which brought thousands of ships, tanks, planes, and troops across the English Channel. -
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Harry S. Truman
33rd president -
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cold war
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Winston Churchill Gives His "Iron Curtain" Speech
Winston Churchill spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. This speech, commonly called the "Iron Curtain" speech but officially called "The Sinews of Peace," described the split of Europe into democratic and Communist spheres. -
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First Inodchina war
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Arab-Israeli War
-
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Korean war
-
The First Peanuts Cartoon Strip
When Schulz sold his first strip to the United Feature Syndicate in 1950, it was the Syndicate that changed the name from Li'l Folks to Peanuts - a name that Schulz himself never liked.
The very first strip was four panels long and showed Charlie Brown walking by two other young children, Shermy and Patty. (Snoopy was the also an early character in the strip, but he did not appear in the very first one.) -
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th president -
Segregation Ruled Illegal in U.S.
the law was changed. In the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by ruling that segregation was "inherently unequal." Although the Brown v. Board of Education was specifically for the field of education, the decision had a much broader scope. -
Hope Diamond Is Donated to the Smithsonian
The large, exquisite, blue diamond known as the Hope Diamond has had a long history. The diamond's history may include having been owned by King Louis XIV, stolen during the French Revolution, sold to earn money for gambling, and worn to raise money for charity. On November 10, 1958, the latest owner of the huge diamond, Harry Winston (a New York jeweler) donated the diamond to the Smithsonian Institute to be displayed as part of the National Gem and Mineral Collection in the National Museum of -
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John F. Kennedy's
35th president -
Soviets Launch First Man in Space
On board Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history when he became both the first person in the world to enter space and the first person to orbit the Earth. -
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Lyndon B. Johnson
36th president -
U.S. Sends Troops to Vietnam
In response to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 2 and 4, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson, per the authority given to him by Congress in the subsequent Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, decided to escalate the Vietnam Conflict by sending U.S. ground troops to Vietnam. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines landed near Da Nang in South Vietnam; they are the first U.S. troops arrive in Vietnam. -
First Heart Transplant
South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard conducted the first heart transplant on 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky. The surgery was a success. However, the medications that were given to Washkansky to prevent his immune system from attacking the new heart also supressed his body's ability to fight off other illnesses. Eighteen days after the operation, Washkansky died of double pneumonia -
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Richard Nixon
37th persident -
MASH T.V. Show Premiers
The first episode of the extremely popular TV series MASH aired on CBS on September 17, 1972. The concept of the MASH storyline was thought up by Dr. Richard Hornberger. Under the pseudonym "Richard Hooker," Dr. Hornberger wrote the book MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors (1968) which was based on his own experiences as a surgeon in the Korean War. In 1970, the book was turned into a movie, also called MASH, which was directed by Robert Altman and starred Donald Sutherland as "Hawkeye" Pierc -
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Gerald Ford
38th president -
Tangshan Earthquake
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit the Chinese city of Tangshan. At 3:42 a.m., most people in the city were asleep, shocked into wakefulness by the shifting earth and falling debris. The 14 to 16 seconds of shaking destroyed nearly the entire city. Although many people who were trapped alive in the rubble were saved, the death toll reached over 240,000. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake was the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century. -
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Jimmy Carter
39th president -
Jonestown Massacre
Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones instructed his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced fruit punch. At the Jonestown compound in Guyana, 912 Peoples Temple members (276 of whom were children) drank the punch and died. Jim Jones died the same day from a gunshot wound to the head. -
Mt. St. Helens
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 was the worst volcanic disaster in U.S. history; however, it offered scientists an exceptional opportunity to examine and study a large volcanic eruption, which has enriched scientific knowledge of volcanoes. -
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Ronald Reagan
40th president -
First Woman Appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court
President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. On September 21, the United States Senate confirmed O'Connor in a vote of 99 for and zero against. Sandra Day O'Connor was officially sworn in and took her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court on September 25, 1981. -
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Falklands War
-
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Invasion of Grenada
-
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George H. W. Bush
41st. president -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
East German government official Günter Schabowski stated during a press conference that travel through the border to the West was open. People who heard the broadcast were shocked. They went to the border to see if it was true. The border guards, who had no explicit instructions as to what to do, let them through.
As the news spread on both sides of the Wall, huge numbers of people flocked to the Berlin Wall and celebrated. -
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Gulf War
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Otzi the Iceman
Two German tourists were hiking in the Otzal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border when they discovered Europe's oldest known mummy sticking out of the ice. Otzi, as the Iceman is now known, had been naturally mummified by the ice and kept in amazing condition for approximately 5,300 years. Research on Otzi's preserved body and the various artifacts found with it continues to reveal much about the life of Copper Age Europeans. -
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Bill Clinton
42nd. president -
Oklahoma City Bombing
Timothy McVeigh drove a truck containing a home-made bomb up to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When the bomb exploded at 9:02 a.m., the building was decimated and 168 people were left dead. -
Princess Diana Dies in Car Crash
Diana, Princess of Wales died after being involved in a car accident. Diana had been riding in the Mercedes-Benz with her boyfriend (Dodi Al Fayed), bodyguard (Trevor Rees-Jones), and chauffer (Henri Paul) when the car crashed into a pillar of the tunnel under the Pont de l'Alma bridge in Paris while fleeing from paparazzi. -
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George W. Bush
43rd. president -
9/11 attack
The U.S. has finally started the prosecution of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, but the trial won't be starting anytime soon, and both sides said Sunday that the case could continue for years. -
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Afghanistan War
-
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war on terror
-
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Iraq War
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Hurricane Katrina
formed over the Bahamas and crossed southern Florida as a moderate Category 1 hurricane, causing some deaths and flooding there before strengthening rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 storm on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast Louisiana. It caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most significant number of deaths occurred in -
First African American President
Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others -
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Barack Obama
44th president -
Oil Spill
On April 20, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and commencing months of oil leaking unrestrained into the ocean. Efforts to manage the spill with controlled burning, dispersants and plugging the leak were unsuccessful until BP capped the well in mid-July, temporarily halting the flow of oil into the Gulf. The well was then successfully plugged and declared "effectively dead" on September 19. -
Fourteen cities eligible to become super-connected
Fourteen cities across the UK could become super-connected cities, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced. The bidding cities will have to show how they will use the status to drive growth with a particular focus on SMEs and strategic employment zones. BT and Virgin will strengthen their networks in the winning cities to deliver 80-100Mbps broadband speeds. It follows the Chancellor’s announcement in the autumn statement that up to 10 cities would -
UK and China launch 'cultural dialogue’
The UK and China have launched a new cultural dialogue to develop closer ties in key sectors such as culture, the creative industries, science and education.
