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YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association, commonly known as the YMCA or simply the Y, is a worldwide organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 2 billion beneficiaries from 125 national associations. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London and aims to put Christian principles into practice by developing a healthy "body, mind, and spirit". These three angles are reflected by the different sides of the triangle—part of all YMCA logos. -
laissez faire
Laissez-faire policy of minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society. From the answer Jean-Baptiste Colbert, controller general of finance under King Louis XIV of France, received when he asked industrialists what the government could do to help business: “Leave us alone.” The doctrine of laissez-faire is usually associated with the economists known as Physiocrats, who flourished in France from about 1756 to 1778. -
Department stores
The three biggest department stores in the mid-1960s, both in sales volume and physical size, were Macy's, Hudson's, and Marshall Field, in that order. Hudson's, shown here, had 25 stories, 16 of them selling floors. Two of its four below-ground floors were basement stores, where 60 departments did up to 25% of the store's business. People saw going to the stores as an experience. -
Theory of Evolution
Ironically, when Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory was first made public in the United States almost 150 years ago, it did not roil the country’s religious and scientific establishments as it did in Britain at the time. Indeed, while the book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection generated debate among American scientists and thinkers, it was largely ignored by the nation’s wider society, due, at least in part, to the country’s preoccupation with the Civil War, slavery -
Homestead Act
Opened up settlement in the western United States, allowing any American, including freed slaves, to put in a claim for up to 160 free acres of federal land. By the end of the Civil War, 15,000 homestead claims had been established, and more followed in the postwar years. Eventually, 1.6 million individual claims would be approved; nearly ten percent of all government held property for a total of 420,000 square miles of territory. -
Morrill Land Grant Act
It was a major boost to higher education in America. The grant was originally set up to establish institutions is each state that would educate people in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and other professions. The land-grant act was introduced by a congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill. He envisioned the financing of agricultural and mechanical education. He wanted to assure that education would be available to those in all social classes. -
Standard Oil Trust
The Standard Oil Trust was formed in 1863 by John D. Rockefeller. He built up the company through 1868 to become the largest oil refinery firm in the world. In 1870, the company was renamed Standard Oil Company, after which Rockefeller decided to buy up all the other competition and form them into one large company.The company faced legal issues in 1890 following passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act. -
John Rockefeller
founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist. Critics accused Rockefeller of engaging in unethical practices such as predatory pricing and colluding with railroads to eliminate his competitors in order to gain a monopoly in the industry. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court found Standard Oil in violation of anti-trust laws and ordered it to dissolve. During his life Rockefeller donated more than $500 million to various philanthropic causes. -
Klu Klux Klan
Advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white supremacy white nationalism anti-immigration. Historically, the KKK used terrorism both physical assault and murder against groups or individuals whom they opposed. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered right-wing extremist organizations. By using violence against African-American leaders. With numerous chapters across the South, it was suppressed, through federal law enforcement. -
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was a pioneer crusader for the woman suffrage movement in the United States and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Her work helped pave the way for the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote.Along with activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 Around this time, the two created and produced The Revolution, a weekly publication that lobbied for women’s rights -
Robber Barons
The originators of the Robber Baron concept were not the injured, the poor, the faddists the jealous,or a dispossessed elite, but rather a frustrated group of observers led at last by protracted years of harsh depression to believe that the American dream of abundant prosperity for all was a hopeless myth Thus the creation of the Robber Baron stereotype seems to have been the product of an impulsive popular attempt to explain the shift in the structure of American society in terms of the obvious -
Boss Tweed
With the Tweed ring's activities reaching a fever pitch, and with the losses for the city piling up, the public finally began to support the ongoing efforts of The New York Times and Thomas Nast to oust Tweed, and he was at last tried and convicted on charges of forgery and larceny in 1873. He was released in 1875, but soon after his release, New York State filed a civil suit against him in an attempt to recover some of the millions he had embezzled, and Tweed was arrested again. -
Red River War
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Native American tribes from the Southern Plains and forcibly relocate them to reservations in Indian Territory. Lasting only a few months, the war had several army columns crisscross the Texas Panhandle in an effort to locate, harass, and capture highly mobile Indian bands the war marked the end of free-roaming Indian populations on the southern Great Plains. -
South Dakota Gold
The Black Hills Gold Rush took place in Dakota Territory in the United States. Prior to the Gold Rush, the Black Hills were used by Native Americans (primarily bands of Sioux but others also ranged through the area). The United States government recognized the Black Hills as belonging to the Sioux by the Treaty of Laramie in 1868. Despite being within Indian territory, and therefore off-limits, white Americans were increasingly interested in the gold-mining possibilities of the Black Hills. -
Battle of little bighorn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of US forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory. -
Light Bulb
The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was not “invented” in the traditional sense in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison, although he could be said to have created the first commercially practical incandescent light. He was neither the first nor the only person trying to invent an incandescent light bulb. In fact, some historians claim there were over 20 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Edison’s version. -
Exodusters
Exodusters was a name given to African Americans who migrated from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century, as part of the Exoduster Movement or Exodus of 1879. It was the first general migration of blacks following the Civil War. The movement received substantial organizational support from prominent figures, Benjamin Singleton of Tennessee and Henry Adams of Louisiana.Almost forty thousand Exodusters left the South to settle in Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado -
Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor, officially Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leaders were Terence V. Powderly and step-brother Joseph Bath. The Knights promoted the social and cultural uplift of the workingman, rejected socialism and anarchism, demanded the eight-hour day, and promoted the producers ethic of republicanism. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
Signed by President Chester A. Arthur, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. The act followed the Angell Treaty of 1880, a set of revisions to the US–China Burlingame Treaty of 1868 that allowed the US to suspend Chinese immigratio. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. It was repealed by the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943. -
Pendleton Act
A United States federal law, enacted in 1883, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation.The act provided selection of government employees by competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation. It also made it illegal to fire or demote government officials for political reasons and prohibited soliciting campaign donations on Federal government property. -
Buffalo Bills wild west show
A well-known scout for the army and a buffalo hunter for the railroads, Cody had gained national prominence 15 years earlier thanks to a fanciful novel written by Edward Zane Carroll Judson. Writing under the pen name Ned Buntline, Judson made Cody the hero of his highly sensationalized dime novel The Scouts of the Plains; or, Red Deviltry As It Is.” In 1872, Judson also convinced Cody to travel to Chicago to star in a stage version of the book. Cody broke with Judson after a year. -
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States founded by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. The Federation was founded and dominated by craft unions throughout its first fifty years, after which many craft union affiliates turned to organizing on an industrial union basis to meet the challenge from the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1940s. -
Great Upheaval of 1886
The Knights of Labor were founded in 1869 as a secret craft union for garment workers in Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey. Although many unions collapsed during the economic depression of the mid-1870s, the Knights survived and went public in 1878, with a transformed agenda. They promoted themselves as a national union for the working class regardless of occupation, religion, race, nationality, or sex, and called for a more equitable industrial system. -
Haymarket Riot
On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing. The organized labor movement in America was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. , the men convicted the riot were viewed in the labor movement as martyrs. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891, in 1898 by the Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. -
Kodak Camera
Kodak was founded by George Eastman and Henry A Strong on September 4 1888. During most of the 20th century Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film. Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital photography. As a part of a turnaround strategy Kodak began to focus on digital photography and digital printing and attempted to generate revenues through aggressive patent litigation -
Sherman Anti- Trust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act is a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890 under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. It allowed certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be competitive, and recommended the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts. -
Wounded Knee
Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota,was the site of two conflicts between North American Indians and representatives of the U.S. government. An 1890 massacre left some 15 0Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation. -
world's columbian exposition of 1893
Organized to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landfall in the New World, the World's Columbian Exposition became a defining moment in Chicago's history and the history of the United States as a whole. When the World's Columbian Exposition opened, only 22 years had passed since the Chicago Fire of 1871; only 28 years had passed since the end of the American Civil War. In the interval, the era of Reconstruction had given way to a -
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States on May 11, 1894, and a turning point for US labor law. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan. The conflict began in Pullman, Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. -
Bicycle Craze
Though different types of bicycles had been around in the United States and Europe for years, recent technological innovation brought about changes in material and design that made bicycle a lighter, smoother, and faster ride. Concerned critics discussed the changes in women's fashion that so much cycling would necessitate. By 1896, there were over 150 bicycle factories in the United States. They were used for recreation and exercise, and in some cases, even for political campaigning. -
election of 1896
The 1896 campaign is often considered by political scientists to be a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System. McKinley forged a coalition in which businessmen, professionals, skilled factory workers and prosperous farmers were heavily represented; he was strongest in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast. Bryan was the nominee of the Democrats, the Populist Party, and the Silver Republicans. -
U.S.S main incident
A massive explosion of unknown origin sinks the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor, killing 260 of the fewer than 400 American crew members aboard. One of the first American battleships, the Maine weighed more than 6,000 tons and was built at a cost of more than $2 million. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, the Maine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January. -
Treat of Paris 1898
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 was an agreement made in 1898 that involved Spain relinquishing nearly all of the remaining Spanish Empire, especially Cuba, and ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. The cession of the Philippines involved a payment of $20 million from the United States to Spain. The treaty was signed on December 10, 1898, and ended the Spanish–American War.The Treaty of Paris marked the end of the Spanish Empire. -
War in the Philippines
After its defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain ceded its longstanding colony of the Philippines to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. On February 4, 1899, just two days before the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, fighting broke out between American forces and Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo who sought independence rather than a change in colonial rulers. -
Philippine American War
An armed conflict between the First Philippine Republic and the United States.The Filipinos saw the conflict as a continuation of the Filipino struggle for independence that began in 1896 with the Philippine Revolution; the U.S. government regarded it as an insurrection.The conflict arose when the First Philippine Republic objected to the terms of the Treaty of Paris under which the United States took possession of the Philippines from Spain, ending the Spanish–American War. -
Open Door Policy
Open Door policy, statement of principles initiated by the United States for the protection of equal privileges among countries trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity. The statement was issued in the form of circular notes dispatched by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay to Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Russia. The Open Door policy was received with almost universal approval in the United States. -
Boxer Rebellion
A Chinese secret organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there. The rebels, referred to by Westerners as Boxers because they performed physical exercises they believed would make them able to withstand bullets, killed foreigners and Chinese Christians and destroyed foreign property. When officially ended, China agreed to pay more than $330 million in reparations. -
Tenements
In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America’s cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City–where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880–buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population. -
William Howard Taft
The Republican William Howard Taft worked as a judge in Ohio Superior Court and in the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals becoming the first civilian governor of the Philippines in 1900. In 1904, Taft took on the role of secretary of war in the administration of Teddy R., who threw his support to the Ohioan as his successor in 1908. Generally more conservative than Roosevelt, he also lacked his expansive view of presidential power, and was a more successful administrator than politician. -
Election of 1900
The United States presidential election of 1900 was held on November 6, 1900. It was a rematch of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan. The return of economic prosperity and recent victory in the Spanish-American War helped McKinley to score a decisive victory. President McKinley chose New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate as Vice President Garret Hobart had died from heart failure in 1899. -
Big Stick Policy
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: "speak softly, and carry a big stick." Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis. The idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the "big stick", or the military, ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies a pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals. -
Meat Inspection Act
prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and derived products as food and ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. The law reformed the meatpacking industry, mandating that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspect all cattle before and after they were slaughtered and processed for human consumption. What encouarged to pass this act was the "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair which showed the horrific truth in the meat markets. -
Pure Food and drug act
For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes. The legacy of the 1906 act includes federal regulatory authority over one-quarter of gross domestic product, and includes market gatekeeping power over human and animal drugs, foods and preservatives, medical devices, biologics and vaccines. -
Muller V. Oregon
Women were provided by state mandate, lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was employer should be equal to a man's. inequality was not a deciding factor because the sexes were inherently different in their particular conditions and had completely different functions usage of labor laws that were made to nurture women's welfare and for the "benefit of all" people was decided to be not a violation of the contract clause within the U.S. constitution. -
17th Amendment
The 17th Amendment came about during the Progressive Era. During this time in American history, reformers were pushing to clean up health standards, improve moral standards, elevate American education and fight corruption in state and local governments. The push for popular election of Senators became part of that campaign. Bryan was highly critical of the Senate's perceived corruption and ineffectiveness. Consequently, he actively campaigned for the passing of the 17th Amendment. -
Election of 1912
The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and defeated Former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party ("Bull Moose") nominee. Roosevelt remains the only third party presidential candidate in U.S. history to finish better than third in the popular or electoral vote. -
Anti- Japanesse laws in Cali
Prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it, but permitted leases lasting up to three years.The law was primarily directed at the Japanese. It passed thirty-five to two in the Senate and seventy-two to three in the Assembly and was co-written by attorney Francis J. Heney and California state attorney general Ulysses S. Webb at the behest of Governor Hiram Johnson. -
Assembly line Process
Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. His innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to two hours and 30 minutes.Ford’s Model T, was simple, sturdy and relatively inexpensive–but not inexpensive enough for Ford, who was determined to build “motor cars for the great multitude.” In order to lower the price of his cars, Ford figured, he would just have to find a way to build them more efficiently. -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act created a system of private and public entities. There were to be at least eight and no more than twelve private regional Federal Reserve banks. Twelve were established, and each had various branches, a board of directors, and district boundaries. The Federal Reserve Board, consisting of seven members, was created as the governing body of the Fed. Each member is appointed by the President of the U.S and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. -
European Alliances
By 1914, the six major powers of Europe were split into two alliances that would form the two warring sides in World War I. Britain, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente, while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy joined in the Triple Alliance. These alliances were not the sole cause of World War I, as some historians have contended, but they did play an important role in hastening Europe's rush to conflict. -
Centrals Powers
The Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – hence also known as the Quadruple Alliance was one of the two main factions during World War I. It faced and was defeated by the Allied Powers that had formed around the Triple Entente.The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria did not join until after World War I had begun, although the Ottoman Empire retained close relations with both Germany and Austria-Hungary since the beginning of the 20th century. -
The Western Front
The Western Front was the main theatrer of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches. -
Mustard Gas
They were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally very slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective. The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas. The killing capacity of gas was limited, with about ninety thousand fatalities from a total of some 1.3 million casualties caused by gas attacks. -
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Princip was one of a group of six assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. Austria-Hungary then declared war, triggering actions leading to war between most European states. -
Panama Canal
President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the realization of a long-term United States goal—a trans-isthmian canal. Throughout the 1800s, American and British leaders and businessmen wanted to ship goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. This was supposed to be a big event when opened but because of the world war 1 it was over looked, but still was a gain for the United States of America. -
Great Migration
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970. Until 1910, more than 90 percent of the African-American population lived in the American South. By the end of the Great Migration, 53 percent of the African-American population remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North. -
Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmermann Telegram was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the prior event of the United States entering World War I against Germany. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. -
First Red Scare
The First Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included those such as the Russian Revolution and anarchist bombings. At its height in 1919–1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged spread of communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of concern if not paranoia -
Espionage Act
It was intended to prohibit interference with military operations or recruitment, to prevent insubordination in the military, and to prevent the support of United States enemies during wartime. In 1919, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled through Schenck v. United States that the act did not violate the freedom of speech of those convicted under its provisions. Its relationship to free speech, and the meaning of its language have been contested in court ever since. -
14 Points
The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. Europeans generally welcomed Wilson's points, but his main Allied colleagues were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism -
American Expeditionary Forces (AEF)
Since 1917, when the U.S. declared war on Germany and entered World War I, American divisions had fought in Europe. But they had only fought in support of the major French or British units already firmly entrenched in the effort. The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) under General John J. Pershing launched their first major offensive in Europe as an independent army. Their successful campaign was a major turning point in the war for the Allies. -
End of WW1
By 1918 there were strikes and demonstrations in Berlin and other cities protesting about the effects of the war on the population. The British naval blockade of German ports meant that thousands of people were starving. Socialists were waiting for the chance to seize Germany as they had in Russia. In October 1918 Ludendorff resigned and the German navy mutinied. The end was near. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 9th 1918. -
New Roads in the 20's
Rural roads were often little more than muddy trails. Bicyclists and railroad companies began calling for good roads in the 1880s, but American road building really took off in the 20th century as a response to rising numbers of cars and trucks. Some of these new roads were private initiatives, such as the Lincoln Highway, but after 1916, federal law and government money fueled much of the country’s road building. Change came due to the Model T. Improving Transportation. -
18th Amendment
the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal. The separate Volstead Act set down methods for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition. The Amendment was the first to set a time delay before it would take effect following ratification, and the first to set a time limit for its ratification by the states. -
National Socialist-German Workers’ Party (NAZI)
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers’ Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I (1914-1918) and required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations. -
19th Amendment
Granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, sending almost a century of protest. In 1848 the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a of the women’s rights movement. -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest. In 1848 the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement. -
Immigration act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia. -
Monkey Trail
The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. -
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator who rose to international fame in 1927 after becoming the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in his monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. In the lead-up to World War II, Lindbergh was an outspoken isolationist, opposing American aid to Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany. Some accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer. Late in life, Lindbergh became a conservationist, arguing that he would rather have “birds than airplanes.” -
Herbert Hoover
took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression. Although his predecessors’ policies undoubtedly contributed to the crisis, which lasted over a decade, Hoover bore much of the blame in the minds of the American people. As the Depression deepened. As a result, Hoover was soundly defeated in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt -
October 29, 1929
On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
The dust bowl
The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions. -
Tin Pan Alley
A number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph, radio, and motion pictures supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider that Tin Pan Alley continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll, which was centered on the Brill Building. -
Hoovervilles
During the Great Depression shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, many looked to the federal government for assistance. When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles. -
Election of 1932
Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Pres. Herbert Hoover. The 1932 election was the first held during the Great Depression, and it represented a dramatic shift in the political alignment of the country. Republicans had dominated the presidency for almost the entire period from 1860. And even in 1928 Hoover had crushed Democrat Alfred E. Smith. Roosevelt’s victory would be the first of five successive Democratic presidential wins. -
20th Amendment
The 20th amendment is a simple amendment that sets the dates at which federal (United States) government elected offices end. In also defines who succeeds the president if the president dies. This amendment was ratified on January 23, 1933.The Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3 -
Emergency Relief Act
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was the new name given by the Roosevelt Administration to the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA) which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had created in 1933. FERA was established as a result of the Federal Emergency Relief Act and was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Along with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) it was the first relief operation under the New Deal. Basically, it gave grants and loans to states. -
Exchange Act
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is a law governing the secondary trading of securities in the United States of America.The Act of '34 and related statutes form the basis of regulation of the financial markets and their participants in the United States. Companies raise billions of dollars by issuing securities in what is known as the primary market. The Act of 1934 regulates the secondary trading of those securities between persons often unrelated to the issuer, through brokers or dealers -
Huey Long "The King FIsh"
A powerful Louisiana governor and U.S. senator. A successful lawyer, he rose through the ranks of the Louisiana government to take over the state’s top post in 1928. The charismatic Long dominated virtually every governing institution within Louisiana, using that power to expand programs for underdeveloped infrastructure and social services. He entered the U.S. Senate in 1935, where he developed a fervent following for his promises of a radical redistribution of wealth. He ran for president. -
Neutrality Acts
The Neutrality Acts were laws passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 to limit U.S. involvement in future wars. They were based on the widespread disillusionment with World War I in the early 1930s and the belief that the United States had been drawn into the war through loans and trade with the Allies.Isolationism was particularly strong in the Midwest.Congressional proponents of neutrality legislation sought to prevent similar mistakes. -
German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
shortly before World War II (1939-45) broke out in Europe–enemies Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union surprised the world by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. With Europe on the brink of another major war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) viewed the pact as a way to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany, while giving him time to build up the Soviet military -
Operation Sealion
Operation Sealion was the name given by Hitler for the planned invasion of Great Britain in 1940. Operation Sealion was never carried out during the war as the Germans lost the Battle of Britain and it is now believed that Hitler was more interested in the forthcoming attack on Russia as opposed to invading Britain. -
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces. -
Battle of Moscow
The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on 370 mi sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Soviet Union's largest city. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union -
U.S. Office of War Information (OWI)
Its purpose was to centralize the many information services of the United States government and create a single line of communication about the war to the American public. The OWI created and distributed posters, booklets, photographs, radio shows and films designed to improve morale and boost patriotism, encourage people to participate in the war effort and, most importantly, control all information Americans received about the war. -
2nd Battle of El Alamein
A battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it was the watershed of the Western Desert Campaign. The First Battle of El Alamein had prevented the Axis from advancing further into Egypt. In August 1942, Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army following the sacking of General Claude Auchinleck and the death of his replacement Lieutenant-General William Gott in a plane crash. -
D-Day
During World War II, the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. -
Battle of the Bulge
Adolph Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. As the Germans drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge, giving rise to the battle’s name.
