-
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt was a self made multi-millionaire who became one of the most wealthiest man alive because of his inventions. Due to past hard working experience with his father as a kid. Later in life as an adult, he went into a business of his own and became one of the largest steamship operators. In the 1860s, his focus was the railroad industry, where he built another empire and helped make railroad transportation more efficient. When Vanderbilt died, he was worth more than $100 million. -
Period: to
Transforming the West
-
Transcontinental Railroad
The Transcontinental Railroad's goal was to connect the US from east to west. The union pacific built west while the central pacific built east. It met in Promontory Point, Utah and it had many problems during its building, the biggest being its exploitation of Chinese workers -
Homestead Act
This law was passed in May of 1862. The Homestead act opened up settlement in the Western region of the United States. This allowed any american or freed slave up to claim for 160 acres of free federal land. Soon after the end of the Civil war, thousands and thousands of homes were established and claimed. Eventually many would have this opportunity to be approved. -
Period: to
Becoming an Industrial Power
-
Ganges
Patrons of husbandry (a.k.a Grange), farmers for societies for solution to ag. problems, hundreds and thousands of members by 1870, politically powerful in the 1870', mid-western legislatures regulated railroads, Granges disappear, First of populist movements, Democrats and Republicans add granger issues to their problems -
Invention of the Standard Oil Company
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist. Born modest in upstate New York, he entered the then-fledgling oil business in 1863 by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio, refinery. In 1870, he established Standard Oil, which by the early 1880s controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. During his life Rockefeller donated more than $500 million to various philanthropic cause. -
Child Labor
During the Industrial Revolution poor children often worked full time jobs in order to help support their families. Children as young as four years old worked long hours in factories under dangerous conditions. The practice of child labor continued throughout much of the Industrial Revolution until laws were eventually passed that made child labor illegal. These children were used as an "advantage" to get into small, tight spaces the adults couldn't seem to get into. In some cases, kids died. -
Farmer's Alliance
Farmers and stockmen formed the Southern Farmers' Alliance in Lampasas County, Texas, as early as 1874 or as late as 1877, according to various sources. The group initially served as a social organization on the central Texas frontier.The Farmer's Alliance took reins from the Granger Movement. It had over 5 million members which were all white. Farmers overcharged on shipping crops by putting high interest loans. Became political to fight monopolies.Won big in 1890. -
The Red River War
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army in 1874 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. -
Invention of the Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell was granted the first official patent for his telephone in March 1876, though he would later face years of legal challenges to his claim that he was its sole inventor, resulting in one of history’s longest patent battles. Bell continued his scientific work for the rest of his life, and used his success and wealth to establish various research centers nationwide. -
Period: to
The Gilded Age
-
Great Uprising
It started with a 10% pay cut. When leaders of the BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY ordered this second reduction in less than eight months, railroad workers in MARTINSBURG, WEST VIRGINIA decided they had had enough. On July 16, 1877, workers in that town drove all the engines into the roundhouse and boldly declared that no train would leave until the owners restored their pay. -
Knights of Labor
The KOL was the first important national labor organization in the U.S, found in 1869 by Uriah Stevens. It originated as a secret organization in order to protect its members from other employers. The goal for this particular group was to combat the tough situation for workers, unions of the Gilded Age pursued two hefty strategies. This group was gradually successful but Terence Powderly ended the group's secrecy upon assuming control of the organization in 1879. -
Invention of the Light Bulb
In 1878, Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp and on October 14, 1878, Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights". However, he continued to test several types of material for metal filaments to improve upon his original design and by Nov 4, 1879, he filed another U.S. patent for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected ... to platina contact wires." -
Political Machines
local political party organization capable of mobilizing or "manufacturing" large numbers of votes on behalf of candidates for political office. Political machines developed in the United States in the early 19th century, reached the peak of their power toward the end of the century, and declined in importance after 1900. Political party machines dominated political life in most American cities in the decades between the Civil War (1861-1865) and the Great Depression (1930s). -
Tenements
Typical housing arrangements were big buildings with numerous amounts of rooms for large families to live together. These large buildings were called tenements. More and more people, such as immigrants, began moving into the city looking for a better life than what was left behind. Cities became extremely populated and tenements were over crowded. These immigrants lived in very intolerable conditions. -
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
The Chinese Exclusion Act placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left the U.S , they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress refused State and Federal courts the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them. When the exclusion act expired in 1892, Congress extended it for 10 years in added restrictions by requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residenc -
Pendleton Act
Following the assassination of President James A. Garfield by a disgruntled job seeker, Congress passed the Pendleton Act in January of 1883. The act was steered through Congress by long-time reformer Senator George Hunt Pendleton of Ohio. The act was signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur, who had become an ardent reformer after Garfield’s assassination -
Haymarket Riot
On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago 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 Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. -
Invention of Coca Cola
Coca-Cola history began in 1886 when the curiosity of an Atlanta pharmacist, Dr. John S. Pemberton, led him to create a distinctive tasting soft drink that could be sold at soda fountains. He created a flavored syrup, took it to his neighborhood pharmacy, where it was mixed with carbonated water and deemed “excellent” by those who sampled it. -
Invention of Sears Catalog.
Sears, Roebuck and Company, colloquially known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1892 and 1906. Formerly based at the Sears Tower in Chicago and currently headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the operation began as a mail ordering catalog company and began opening retail locations in 1925. The first location was in Evansville, Indiana. -
Invention of Kodak Camera
This Original Kodak camera, introduced by George Eastman, placed the power of photography in the hands of anyone who could press a button. Unlike earlier cameras that used a glass-plate negative for each exposure, the Kodak came with a 100-exposure roll of flexible film. After finishing the roll, the consumer mailed the camera back to the factory to have the prints made. -
Period: to
Imperialism
-
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was the first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts. It was named for Senator John Sherman of Ohio, who was a chairman of the Senate finance committee and the Secretary of the Treasury under President Hayes. Several states had passed similar laws, but they were limited to intrastate businesses. The Sherman Antitrust Act was based on the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. -
Populist Party
The People's party, more commonly known as the Populist party, was organized in St. Louis in 1892 to represent the common folk—especially farmers—against the entrenched interests of railroads, bankers, processers, corporations, and the politicians in league with such interests. -
World's Columbian Exposition Chicago
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 Gilded Age characterized by frenetic industrial growth, mass immigration, and class violence as evidenced by Chicago's 1886 Haymarket Square bombing. -
Panic of 1893
One of the first clear signs of trouble came on February 20, 1893, twelve days before the inauguration of U.S. president Grover Cleveland. The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in that year.[1] Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures. -
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was the widespread railroad strike and boycott that severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest of the United States in June–July 1894. The federal government’s response to the unrest marked the first time that an injunction was used to break a strike. Amid the crisis, on June 28, President Grover Cleveland and Congress created a national holiday, Labor Day, as a conciliatory gesture toward the American labor movement. -
Period: to
Progressive Era
-
Plessy vs Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". This legitimized the state laws re-establishing racial segregation that were passed in the American South in the late 19th century after the end of the Reconstruction Era. -
U.S.S Maine
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. An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly placing the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible and called for a declaration of war. -
Death of Henry Bessemer
Bessemer process, the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. Though named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, the process evolved from the contributions of many investigators before it could be used on a broad commercial basis. It was apparently conceived independently and almost concurrently by Bessemer and by William Kelly of the United States. In 1847, Kelly began experiments aimed a After several failures, he succeeded in proving his theory and rapidly producing steel ingots. -
The Battle of Manila Bay
The Battle of Manila Bay took place on 1 May 1898, during the Spanish–American War. The American Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey engaged and destroyed the Spanish Pacific Squadron under Contraalmirante Patricio Montojo. The battle took place in Manila Bay in the Philippines, and was the first major engagement of the Spanish–American War. The battle was one of the most decisive naval battles in history and marked the end of the Spanish colonial period in Philippine history -
The Battle of Santiago
The Battle of Santiago sealed the U.S. victory over the Spaniards.
On May 19, 1898, a month after the outbreak of hostilities between the two powers, a Spanish fleet under Admiral Pascual Cervera arrived in Santiago harbour on the southern coast of Cuba. The Spanish fleet was immediately blockaded in harbor by superior U.S. warships from the U.S. squadrons in the Atlantic, under Rear Admiral William T. Sampson and Commodore Winfield S. Schley. -
Battle of San Juan
Battle of San Juan Hill, (1 July 1898), also known as the Battle of San Juan Heights, the most significant U.S. land victory, and one of the final battles, of the Spanish-American War. After the Battle of Las Guasimas in Cuba, Major General William Shafter planned to take Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second largest city. Reports of Spanish reinforcements on route to the city caused him to accelerate his plans. -
The Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was fought between the United States and Spain in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. American acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions led to its involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately in the Philippine–American War. -
Treaty of Paris 1898
President William McKinley had finally decided that the United States must take possession of the Philippines. The demand was ultimately accepted with great reluctance by Spain, with the stipulation that the United States should pay Spain $20 million nominally for public buildings and public works in the Philippines. The final treaty also forced Spain to cede all claim to Cuba and to agree to assume the liability for the Cuban debt, estimated at $400 million. -
The Philippine-American War
The Philippine–American War was 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. -
The Open Door Policy
The policy proposed to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, keeping any one power from total control of the country, and calling upon all powers, within their spheres of influence, to refrain from interfering with any treaty port or any vested interest, to permit Chinese authorities to collect tariffs on an equal basis, and to show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbor dues or railroad charge -
Election of 1900
The United States presidential election of 1900 was the 29th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1900. In a re-match of the 1896 race, Republican President William McKinley defeated his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan. McKinley's victory made him the first president to win consecutive re-election since Ulysses S. Grant had accomplished the same feat in 1872. -
The Platt Amendment
The Platt Amendment was passed as part of the 1901 Army Appropriations Bill. It stipulated seven conditions for the withdrawal of United States troops remaining in Cuba and an eighth condition that Cuba sign a treaty accepting these seven conditions. It defined the terms of Cuban–U.S. relations to essentially be an unequal one of U.S. dominance over Cuba. On December 25, 1901, Cuba amended its constitution to contain, word for word, the seven applicable demands of the Platt Amendment.[2 -
The Big Stick Policy
Big Stick policy, in American history, policy popularized and named by Theodore Roosevelt that asserted U.S. domination when such dominance was considered the moral imperative. Roosevelt’s first noted public use of the phrase occurred when he advocated before Congress increasing naval preparation to support the nation’s diplomatic objectives. Roosevelt cited his fondness for a West African proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” -
Election of 1904
The United States presidential election of 1904 was the 30th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1904. Incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt defeated the Democratic nominee, Alton B. Parker. Roosevelt had acceded to office in 1901 following the assassination of William McKinley -
The Jungle
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American novelist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, greatly contributing to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. -
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, 240 to 17. It wasn’t until the public outcry following the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle that Congress moved on legislation that would prevent “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs or medicines, and liquors. -
Meat Inspection Act
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) is an American law that makes it a crime to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. This 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. -
Muller vs Oregon
In 1903, Oregon passed a law that said that women could work no more than 10 hours a day in factories and laundries. A woman at Muller's laundry was required to work more than 10 hours. Muller was convicted of violating the law. By a 9-0 vote, the justices upheld the Oregon law. Brandeis's strategy succeeded. The justices were convinced that Oregon's law was significantly different from the New York law they had struck down just three years before in Lochner. -
Model T Invention
The Model T, also known as the “Tin Lizzie,” changed the way Americans live, work and travel. Henry Ford’s revolutionary advancements in assembly-line automobile manufacturing made the Model T the first car to be affordable for a majority of Americans. For the first time car ownership became a reality for average American workers, not just the wealthy. More than 15 million Model Ts were built in Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan. -
Election of 1912
American presidential election held on November 5, 1912, in which Democrat Woodrow Wilson defeated Bull Moose (Progressive) candidate and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and Republican incumbent president William Howard Taft. The election was largely between Roosevelt and Wilson. The incumbent, Taft, was never really a contender. Some of the major issues included trusts, women's suffrage, and tariffs: Wilson proposed the elimination of big, monopolistic businesses (trusts) -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act ( enacted December 23, 1913) is an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System (the central banking system of the United States), and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes (commonly known as the US Dollar) as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. -
Period: to
World War I
-
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
In an event that is widely acknowledged to have sparked the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is shot to death along with his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on this day in 1914. The great Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, was quoted as saying at the end of his life that “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” It went as he predicted. -
Sinking of RMS Lusitania
The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania during the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany. The ship was identified and torpedoed by the German U-boat U-20 and sank in 18 minutes. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, contributed to the American entry into World War I and became an iconic symbol in military recruiting campaigns of why the war was being fought. -
The 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. In 1900, only one-fifth of African-Americans living in the South were living in urban areas. By the end of the Great Migration, only 53 percent of the African-American population remained in the South,. -
National Park System
On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, a new federal bureau in the Department of the Interior responsible for protecting the 35 national parks and monuments then managed by the department and those yet to be established. -
Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmerman 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. Revelation of the contents enraged American public opinion. -
The Espionage Act
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime. 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 -
Spanish Flu
The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people around the world, including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic, and resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (three to five percent of the world's population), making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. -
The Fourteen 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.
The United States had joined the Allied Powers in fighting the Central Powers on April 6, 1917. -
Battle of the Argonne Forest
The Battle of the Argonne Forest was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I. It was fought from 26 September 1918 until the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a total of 47 days. The war was the largest in United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers. It was one of a series of Allied attacks known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which brought the war to an end. The battle cost 28,000 German lives and 26,277 American lives. -
Treaty of Versailles
World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. Negotiated among the Allied powers with little participation by Germany, its 15 parts and 440 articles reassigned German boundaries and assigned liability for reparations. Germany agreed to pay reparations under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, but those plans were cancelled in 1932, and Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent actions rendered moot the remaining terms of the treaty. -
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. -
The Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the generation that came of age during World War I. Demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe outlined their Strauss–Howe generational theory using 1883–1900 as birth years for this generation. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. -
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan, is three distinct movements in the United States that have advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration and in anti-Catholicism and antisemitism. 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. -
Nativism
In the 1920s a wide national consensus sharply restricted the overall inflow of immigrants, especially those from southern and eastern Europe. Nativism is the political position of preserving status for certain established inhabitants of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. It is characterized by opposition to immigration based on fears that the immigrants will distort or spoil exist. -
Harlem Renaissance
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. -
Period: to
1920's
-
The 18th Amendment
The 18th Amendment established 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. President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bill, but the House of Representatives overrode the veto, and the Senate did so as well the next day. -
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. -
Teapot Dome Scandal
Teapot Dome Scandal was the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the secretary of the interior, Albert Bacon Fall. After Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil-reserve lands from the navy to the Department of the Interior , Fall secretly granted to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome reserves . He granted similar rights to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum Company for the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills reserves in California. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States as of the 1890 census, down from the 3% cap set by the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which used the Census of 1910. -
American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
But on June 2, 1924, Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. Yet even after the Indian Citizenship Act, some Native Americans weren't allowed to vote because the right to vote was governed by state law. Until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting. -
The Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial was an American legal case in which a substitute teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant -
Charles Lindberg
Charles Augustus Lindberg was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, explorer, and environmental activist. At age 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize–making a nonstop flight from New York to Paris. He covered the 33.5 hour trip alone in a single-engine purpose-built Ryan monoplane. This was the first solo transatlantic flight and the first non-stop flight between North America and mainland Europe. -
Laissez Faire
In the 18th century, French economists became upset with taxes and subsidies that were being imposed on their businesses. They believed that governments should leave the individual businesses alone, except when social liberties were infringed upon. In the 19th century, it became known in the U.S. It wasn't long after this that the 'free market' approach started to display problems, such as large gaps in distribution of wealth, poor treatment of workers, and lack of safety in the workplace. -
Period: to
The Great Depression
-
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), America’s 31st president, 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, Hoover failed to recognize the severity of the situation or leverage the power of the federal government to squarely address it. -
Stock Market Crash of 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. -
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. -
Bonus March
Following WWI, a pension was promised all returning service men to be administered in 1945. As the Great Depression took shape, many WWI veterans found themselves out of work, and an estimated 17,000 traveled to Washington, D.C. in May 1932 to put pressure on Congress to pay their cash bonus immediately. The former soldiers created camps in the Nation’s capital when they did not receive their bonuses which led to their forcible removal by the Army and the bulldozing of their settlements. -
Election of 1932
The United States presidential election of 1932 took place as the effects of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression were being felt intensely across the country. President Herbert Hoover's popularity was falling as voters felt he was unable to reverse the economic collapse, or deal with prohibition. Franklin D. Roosevelt used what he called Hoover's failure to deal with these problems as a platform for his own election, promising reform in his policy called the New Deal. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
Born in 1884 in New York City, Eleanor Roosevelt was the niece of one U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, and married a man who would become another, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Redefining the role of the first lady, she advocated for human and women's rights, held press conferences and penned her own column. After leaving the White House in 1945, Eleanor became chair of the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission. The groundbreaking first lady died in 1962 in New York City. -
The New Deal
When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. More than that, Roosevelt’s New Deal permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to the U.S. populace. -
National Recovery Administration
National Recovery Administration (NRA), was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to stimulate business recovery through fair-practice codes during the Great Depression. The NRA was an essential element in the National Industrial Recovery Act (June 1933), which authorized the president to institute industry-wide codes intended to eliminate unfair trade practices, reduce unemployment, establish minimum wages and maximum hours, and guarantee the right of labour to bargain collectively. -
The Glass-Steagall Act
The Glass–Steagall legislation describes four provisions of the U.S. Banking Act of 1933 separating commercial and investment banking.
The common name comes from the names of the Congressional sponsors, Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry B. Steagall. The separation of commercial and investment banking prevented securities firms and investment banks from taking deposits, and commercial Federal Reserve member banks -
The 21st Amendment
The Twenty-first Amendment (Amendment XXI) to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide Prohibition on alcohol on January 16, 1919. The Twenty-first Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933[1]. It is unique among the 27 amendments of the U.S. Constitution for being the only one to repeal a prior amendment and to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions. -
Munich Conference
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation, the "Sudetenland", was coined. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September) after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. -
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. -
Period: to
World War II
-
German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
On August 23, 1939 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. -
Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, running from 1939 to the defeat of Germany in 1945. It was a major part of the Naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, announced the day after the declaration of war, and Germany's subsequent counter-blockade. It was at its height from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943. -
Fuhrer 7
A German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP), Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Führer ("Leader") of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator, Hitler initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and was central to the Holocaust. By 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag but did not have a majority -
Election of 1940
The United States presidential election of 1940 was fought in the shadow of World War II as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), a Democrat, broke with tradition and ran for a third term, which became a major issue. The surprise Republican candidate was maverick businessman Wendell Willkie, a dark horse who crusaded against Roosevelt's failure to end the Depression and eagerness for war. -
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles. By this point German combat effectiveness had reached its apogee; in training, doctrine, and fighting ability, the forces invading Russia. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, and was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. -
Battle of Midway
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. An important turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position. -
D-Day
During World War II (1939-1945), 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. Code named 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
In December 1944, 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.
