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The YMCA is founded
the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), a refuge of Bible study and prayer for young men seeking escape from the hazards of life on the streets. Although an association of young men meeting around a common purpose was nothing new, the Y offered something unique for its time. The organization’s drive to meet social need in the community was compelling, and its openness to members crossed the rigid lines separating English social classes. -
Fredrick Olmsted designs Central Park
Regarded as the founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) is best known for designing the grounds of New York City's Central Park, the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. -
First College Football Game
Rutgers University and its neighbor, Princeton, played the first game of intercollegiate football on Nov. 6, 1869, on a plot of ground where the present-day Rutgers gymnasium now stands in New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers won that first game, 6-4. The game was played with two teams of 25 men each under rugby-like rules, but like modern football, it was "replete with surprise, strategy, prodigies of determination, and physical prowess," to use the words of one of the Rutgers players. -
The Cincinnati Reds (a.k.a. the Cincinnati Red Stockings)
Professional baseball originated in Cincinnati, Ohio. The first game played by a team where all players were professionals and received pay for playing occurred on June 1, 1869, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings defeated the Mansfield Independents, an amateur club. The Red Stockings won by a score of forty-eight to fourteen. 1876, the team, now known as the Cincinnati Reds, became one of the original members of the National League -
Establishment of the 1st National Park
By the Act of March 1, 1872, Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming "as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and placed it "under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior." -
Luther Gulick
gave significant leadership and promotion to the playground and recreation movements of the early 1900s. With most of his time involved in the fields of physical education and hygiene By the beginning of 1886, Dr. Gulick was the physical director of the Jackson, Michigan YMCA. In 1903, Dr. Gulick became the president of the American Physical Education Association.in 1904, he received international recognition for his Physical Training Lectures at the St. Louis Exposition. -
Jane Adams founds Hull House
A progressive social reformer and activist, Jane Addams was on the frontline of the settlement house movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She later became internationally respected for the peace activism that ultimately won her a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman to receive this honor. In 1889, Addams and Starr founded Hull House -
James Naismith Invents Basketball
Naismith went to teach at YMCA International Training College in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1890. He was given 14 days to develop an indoor game that would capture the interest of students confined indoors during the cold winter. Adapting some elements from familiar games, Naismith invented the game of basketball in 1891 -
The Sierra Club
the Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. They amplify the power of our 3.5+ million members and supporters to defend everyone’s right to a healthy world. John Muir and a group of friends banded together in 1892 to ensure that California's mountains were protected and accessible to everyone. -
Joseph Lee
Joseph Lee, known as the “Father of the Modern Playground,” In 1898, Lee assisted in the development of the Columbus Avenue Playground in Boston. The model site included a boy’s play area, garden spaces, a sports field and indoor facilities for basketball and bowling. -
The New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University
The school was defunded in 1898. In 1911 it was reestablished Now its apart of the (SUNY) system. -
Invention of the Automobile
The 1901 Mercedes, designed by Wilhelm Maybach for Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, deserves credit for being the first modern motorcar in all essentials.
Its thirty-five-horsepower engine weighed only fourteen pounds per horsepower, and it achieved a top speed of fifty-three miles per hour. -
The National Park Service
Cares for more than 400 national parks in the US -
The 1920's
The 1920s was a decade of change when many Americans owned cars, radios, and telephones for the first time. The cars brought the need for good roads. The radio brought the world closer to home. The telephone connected with families and friends. Prosperity was on the rise in cities and towns, and social change flavored the air. -
The Harlem Reaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance, and art. -
The 1930's
During the Depression, most people did not have much money to spare. Swing music encouraged people to cast aside their troubles and dance. Bandleaders like Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson drew crowds of young people to ballrooms and dance halls around the country. And even though money was tight, people kept on going to the movies. Musicals, “screwball” comedies and hard-boiled gangster pictures likewise offered audiences an escape from the grim realities of life in the 1930s. -
Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier in MLB
in 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke the color barrier in a sport that had been segregated for more than 50 years -
Brown vs. Board of Education
in this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the "separate but equal" principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. -
Establishment of the interstate highway system
The Interstate System has been called the Greatest Public Works Project in History. From the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate System has been a part of our culture as construction projects, as transportation in our daily lives, and as an integral part of the American way of life. -
Establishment of The Special Olympics
From a backyard summer camp for people with intellectual disabilities to a global movement. Eunice Kennedy Shriver starts an innovative summer camp for young people with intellectual disabilities at her home in suburban Washington, D.C. The first International Special Olympics Summer Games are held at Soldier Field in Chicago -- a joint venture between the Kennedy Foundation and the Chicago Park District. -
The invention of the Television
Televisions can be found in billions of homes around the world. But 100 years ago, nobody even knew what a television was -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public.
