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Passage of Selective Service Act
The Selective Service Act required all men between the ages of 21-30 to go into a draft for military service. This act was passed so that when future conflicts arose the US was able to immediately send troops to aid other countries or to start a war without having to train them and take more time before engaging in war by doing so this improved preparedness. -
18th Amendment
This amendment prohibited the buying, selling, transportation and making of alcohol within the US. In response to the banning of alcohol organized crime began to rise and the sale of illegal liquor called “bootlegging”. Was passed due to the belief of religious groups who thought being drunk was a threat to the nation and it was advocated by women who were in abusive or bad relationships with their husbands due to alcohol consumption. -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a black artistic, cultural and literary movement in the 1920s to the mid 1930s. This movement was centered in Harlem where it became “a spiritual coming in age” and brought attention in pride to African Americans. It is most famous for it’s creation of jazz and jazz musicians. The Harlem Renaissance brought together both black and whites with some of the most famous musicians such as, Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington and Zora Neale Hurston. -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment granted American women the right to vote. After the African Americans during the Civil War were granted the right to vote more women began to push for their suffrage. They felt they were being treated unfairly based on their gender. Women became a larger part of society once granted the right to vote. Women played a bigger role in the US and the war effort during World War I after the right to vote was given. -
Emergency Quota Act
The Emergency Quota Act temporarily placed a limit on the amount of immigrants allowed into America based on what country the immigrant was born in. This act favored the western and northern European immigrants. In position to immigrants coming to America the KKK came back into power but now instead of just discriminating against blacks they discriminated against Catholics and Jews. Due to the EQA the US could not help Jewish people coming from Germany because it violated the act. -
Sacco and Vanzetti Trial
Two Italian men, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested and charged with robbery and murder. Although neither men had a criminal record, both were convicted oth men were anarchist and therefore, the government executed them on August 23. -
John Scopes Trial
John Scopes, a science teacher in Tennessee, was arrested and charged with violating a Tennessee state law that forbid the teaching of any theories that went against what the Bible taught. Scopes enlisted Charles Darrow as his defense attorney with William Jennings Bryan as the prosecution attorney. Darrow tried to argue that the law was unconstitutional and that not everyone interprets the Bible literally. Scopes lost the case because Bryan proved that Scopes had violated the law. -
Flight of Charles Lindbergh
In May of 1919, Raymond Orteig put out a prize of $25,000 to the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. The challenge was good for five years, however, when no one had attempted the flight by 1926, Orteig made an extension of the offer. Several of the world’s top pilots, including Charles Lindbergh, decided to accept the challenge. Lindbergh was sponsored by the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce and his aircraft was built. Lindbergh then successfully travelled from New York to Paris. -
The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer was the first movie that was produced with sound. This film was produced for entertainment purposes and it made the Warner Bros thousands of dollars. It was created from a sound-on-disc technology. This improvement in technology and development of movies that now had sound resulted in a technological advance as well as an innovation of how movies were going to be from then on. This impacted the way the world watches movies today. -
Herbert Hoover's election
Herbert Hoover took office in 1928 and just a few months later the Great Depression struck America. The Great Depression occurred when US economy took a turn for the worst due to a significant drop in the stock market prices that people invested their money into after WWI. The impact of Hoover being elected president was the start of the Great Depression which was not ended until 10 years later when the US entered WWII and it caused an economic downfall with high unemployment rates and poverty. -
Black Tuesday
Stock prices declined in Sep. and early Oct. On Oct. 24th, Black Thursday, a record amount of shares were traded. The following Monday the stock market began to crash and went into a free fall. The next day, known as Black Tuesday, is the day when the stock prices collapsed completely. As investors tried to trade a record number of shares, they ended up losing billions of dollars and took out thousands of investors. . The aftermath of Black Tuesday was America entering into the Great Depression. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt 1st election
Franklin D. Roosevelt when elected into presidency created the New Deal program that focused to relief, recovery, and reform. He passed numerous acts that were created to relieve, recover and reform the United States during the Great Depression. Due to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating programs such as the AAA, CCC, PWA, WPA, TVA, FDIC, SEC and many more programs it allowed the United States to start to recover from the Great Depression and how it impacted America. -
Passage of the FDIC
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was made by President Roosevelt to insure and create stability of people’s money after the stock market crash when were just giving peoples’ money to the first people who came to the bank to take out loans. The FDIC was created to protect people who held their money in the banks. After the creation of the FDIC people became more trustworthy of the banks in America and started to put their money into them again. -
21st Amendment
The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment and brought an end to prohibition. This amendment was put into place because the prohibition laws were not being upheld and it was causing a rise in organized crime which was losing the federal and state governments billions in tax revenue. Due to the 21st Amendment alcohol was now allowed in America legally again and the government started making money based on the sales of the liquor. -
National Labor Relations Act
The National Labor Relations act allowed workers to become trade union members and to go on strikes withholding their labor. This made more workers want to join labor unions and go on strike when needed because they knew they were protected by the government. This improved the amount of workers employers had coming to them for jobs. This impacted the United States because it made people not afraid to speak their mind on jobs and brought more people to the workforce. -
Passage of the Social Security Act
The Social Security Act was passed by Congress to provide a set income from people who were unemployed or either retired. By Roosevelt creating the Social Security Act it allowed people to help provide for their families. Also, it kept many and people out of poverty. The Social Security Act helped to keep America from falling further into a depression as well as relieve the people of America like Roosevelt said he was going to do in his New Deal. -
Neutrality Act
This is the act signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt stating that American vessels would now be required to have a license to carry arms, Americans were not allowed to sail on ships to or from antagonistic nations, America would increase its patrol of foreign submarines in America waters, and an embargo would be put on the sale of arms to belligerent nations. This act was supposed to keep the U.S. out of the war, but stated that we could not foresee future situations. -
Hindenburg Disaster
A German airship known as the “Hindenburg” was an airship large enough to carry a vast amount of passengers and became the first transatlantic air service. The Hindenburg left Germany on May 3rd for a trip across the Atlantic. While attempting to moor at the Navy Air Base in Lakehurst, the airship spontaneously burst in flames, most likely due to a spark igniting its hydrogen core. Falling 200 feet to the ground, the airship incinerated in seconds. No airships survived WWII after this disaster. -
Germany invades Poland
When Germany invaded Poland this is the day that WWII begun. Hitler used the tactics of “blitzkrieg” while invading Poland and began to take control on the Poland nation. Immediately Hitler began to plan to kill the people that did not fit his Nazi ideology. Germany invaded Poland because Hitler wanted to make Germany great again and take back all the land they lost after WWI. Due to Hitler invading Poland the holocaust happened as well as the start of the Second World War. -
Lend-Lease Act
This act went against the Neutrality Act by allowing the United States to provide military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The Lend-Lease Act authorized the transfer of arms and other defense material to countries that were vital to the defense of the U.S. such as, Great Britain, China, the Soviet Union, etc. Many isolationists opposed this act because it put the U.S. closer to entry into WW II and went against the requirement of payment from foreign nations, outlined in the N.A. -
Pearl Harbor
On the morning of December 7th, 1941, hundreds of Japanese planes attacked the naval base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although the attack only lasted up to two hours, Japan managed to destroy nearly 320 naval assets, killed and injured more than 3,000 people. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan the next day. The attack resulted from America's unhappiness with Japan’s war on China, so the U.S. responded by creating economic sanctions and trade embargos on Japan. -
D-Day
D-Day is known as the day that the Allied Powers stormed the beaches of Normandy in order to liberate France from the Nazi’s. This was the largest land, sea and air attack in history. The land invasions began on the morning of the 6th, where British, Canadian, and American soldiers fought on the beaches in order to capture them. By the end of the day, 155,000 American, British and Canadian troops successfully stormed and captured the beaches of Normandy and the Germans were defeated. -
Liberation of Concentration Camps
While moving through Europe the Allied powers began to find Nazi concentration camps. This rose awareness to what Hitler was doing to the people he discriminated against. The US became aware of the Holocaust which happened because Hitler believed in harming and murdering anyone who did not fit the Nazi ideology. The impact on America when finding the concentration camps was that many people began to realize what was going on in Europe and the US tried to help the people who were still alive. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference was a meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin held February 4 through the 11. It was to discuss the formation of the United Nations and to discuss what was going to happen to Poland. The Yalta Conference was held to create an organization that would create peace like the United Nations because the League of Nations had failed after WWI and the big three didn’t want that to happen again. The United Nations is still intact today and working. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
America invaded the island of Iwo Jima because of the need for a base close to Japan where B-9 bombers could return to after leaving Japan. America attacked the island through air, naval and marine fleets. Japan defended the island with nearly 23,000 soldiers, while using networks of caves, dugouts and tunnels through underground installation. After a month of fighting, American forces defeated the Japanese and the famous raising of the American flag proved American victory. -
FDR's Death
Around 1 pm on a spring day at his Georgia retreat, the president began to complain of great pain in the back of his head and passed out. A doctor was called and they immediately recognized the symptoms as a cerebral hemorrhage and gave in a shot of adrenaline to revive him. However, by 3:30 pm, Franklin Roosevelt was pronounced dead. Now that the president had died, Harry Truman, the vice president, would go into office to serve out the rest of his term. FDR, sadly did not see the end of WWII. -
VE Day
This was the day of celebration of Victory in Europe by both America and Great Britain. On this day, German soldiers all throughout Europe laid down their arms and surrendered to the Allied Powers. The final bit of German surrenders in the Soviet Union continued on into the next day, where 600 soviet soldiers lost their lives before the German troops finally surrendered. VE Day in the U.S.S.R. wasn’t celebrated until May 9th when Stalin announced the defeat of the Nazi’s. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The world’s first deployed atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber in order to end the long, stretched out war with Japan. The explosion in Hiroshima took out 90% of the city, initially killing 80,000 people. When Japan did not surrender, America dropped another bomb on the city of Nagasaki, three days later, killing 40,000 people. The emperor of Japan then announced Japan’s unconditional surrender to America and the Allied Powers. -
VJ Day
Victory over Japan day was during World War II this was the day the Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. The victory over Japan brought six years of hostility and fighting to an end. Japan surrendered after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. VJ Day officially ended fascism in the United States. A sense of relief and excitement was felt throughout the people of America.
