-
Volstead Act
Volstead Act, formally National Prohibition Act, U.S. law enacted in 1919 (and taking effect in 1920) to provide enforcement for the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages -
Census revealed 50% urban population,
The 1920 census marked the first time in which over 50 percent of the U.S. population was defined as urban. -
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. -
Universal Negro Improvement Association
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), primarily in the United States, organization founded by Marcus Garvey, dedicated to racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, and the formation of an independent Black nation in Africa. -
19th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. -
Dawes Plan
The Dawes Plan of 1924 (devised by a banker from the United States called Charles G. Dawes) was an agreement between the Allies and Germany. The basic idea behind the plan was to make it easier for Germany to pay reparations and had two key parts. Reparations were reduced in the short term to 50 million pounds per year. -
Immigration Act
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. -
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a high school 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 -
Transatlantic Flight
Any flight which spans across the Atlantic Ocean is referred to as a transatlantic flight. For example, any flight to and from the United States of America. -
The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film. As the first feature-length motion picture with not only a synchronized recorded music score, but also lip-synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and ended the silent film era. -
Kellogg-Briand Pact
The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris – officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy[1] – is a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them" -
Stock Market Crash
By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the stock market crash of 1929 were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a struggling agricultural sector and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated. -
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, (Feb. 14, 1929), mass murder of a group of unarmed bootlegging gang members in Chicago. The bloody incident dramatized the intense rivalry for control of the illegal liquor traffic during the Prohibition Era in the United States. -
Bonus Army
The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – made up of 17,000 U.S. World War I veterans, together with their families and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service certificates. -
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. -
Federal Emergency Relief Act
The act established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, a grant-making agency authorized to distribute federal aid to the states for relief. By the end of December 1935, FERA had distributed over $3.1 billion and employed more than 20 million people. -
Civil Works Administration
The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a short-lived job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression in the United States to rapidly create mostly manual-labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter of 1933–34. -
“Hundred Days”
Hundred Days, in U.S. history, the early period of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency (March 9–June 16, 1933), during which a major portion of New Deal legislation was enacted. -
Emergency Banking Relief Act
The Emergency Banking Act (EBA) (the official title of which was the Emergency Banking Relief Act), Public Law 73-1, 48 Stat. 1 (March 9, 1933), was an act passed by the United States Congress in March 1933 in an attempt to stabilize the banking system. -
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter on May 18, 1933, to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression -
Public Works Administration
Public Works Administration, part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. -
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the President to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. ... President Roosevelt signed the bill into law on June 16, 1933. -
U.S. off gold standard
The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard. -
Second New Deal,
Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their acronyms. -
Social Security Act
On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped. -
Jesse Owens wins four gold medals
At the 1936 Berlin Games, Owens won four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records. -
Neutrality Act (Cash and Carry)
The purpose of this policy was to allow the Allied nations at war with Germany to purchase war materials while maintaining a semblance of neutrality for the United States. ... Cash and carry ended this prohibition, while still attempting to keep U.S. interests out of the conflict. -
Destroyers for Bases Deal
The destroyers-for-bases deal was an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on September 2, 1940, according to which 50 Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson class US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy from the United States Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions. -
Lend-Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act, approved by Congress in March 1941, had given President Roosevelt virtually unlimited authority to direct material aid such as ammunition, tanks, airplanes, trucks, and food to the war effort in Europe without violating the nation's official position of neutrality. -
Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. -
Rationing Begins
Rationing began on 8th January 1940 when bacon, butter and sugar were rationed. By 1942 many other foodstuffs, including meat, milk, cheese, eggs and cooking fat were also 'on the ration'. -
Midway
The U.S. Navy's decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) and its successful defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan's hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific. -
Korematsu v. United States
United States, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, on December 18, 1944, upheld (6–3) the conviction of Fred Korematsu—a son of Japanese immigrants who was born in Oakland, California—for having violated an exclusion order requiring him to submit to forced relocation during World War II. -
D-Day
On D-Day, 6 June 1944, Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. ... Early on 6 June, Allied airborne forces parachuted into drop zones across northern France. Ground troops then landed across five assault beaches - Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference was a meeting of three World War II allies: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The trio met in February 1945 in the resort city of Yalta, located along the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula. -
V-E Day
Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the end of World War II in Europe. -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference, held near Berlin, July 17-August 2, 1945, was the last of the Big Three meetings during World War II. It was attended by Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, the new American president, Harry S -
V-J Day
Victory over Japan Day is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect bringing the war to an end. -
Iron Curtain Speech
1964 Speech delivered by Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri where he said "An iron curtain has descended across Europe", the curtain refereeing to communism. The Iron Curtain was both a physical and an ideological division that represented the way Europe was viewed after World War II. -
Truman Doctrine
With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. Truman asked Congress to support the Greek Government against the Communists. -
Marshall Plan,
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. -
Containment Policy
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. -
China Goes Red
The “fall” of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the United States to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades. Communists entering Beijing in 1949. -
NATO Formed
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
Alger Hiss Convicted
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. -
Korean War Begins
The Korean War began when North Korean troops pushed into South Korea on June 25, 1950, and it lasted until 1953. -
Rosenberg’s Convicted of Espionage
In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. -
McCarthy Allegations
During the McCarthy era, hundreds of Americans were accused of being "communists" or "communist sympathizers"; they became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees, and agencies. -
Domino Theory
The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a perfectly aligned row of dominos. With the exception of Laos and Cambodia, communism failed to spread throughout Southeast Asia. -
SEATO Formed
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. -
Elvis Presley
In 1956 Elvis seemed to be everywhere—on the record charts, on TV, in movie theaters, and live on stage. Elvis made record chart history in 1956. During the year he placed 17 different songs on Billboard's Top 100 singles chart, including 3 singles that reached #1—Heartbreak Hotel, Don't Be Cruel, and Love Me Tender. -
Sputnik I
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit Earth on its elliptical path. -
Berlin Crisis
On November 10, 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in which he demanded that the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain and France pull their forces out of West Berlin within six months. This ultimatum sparked a three year crisis over the future of the city of Berlin that culminated in 1961 with the building of the Berlin Wall. -
U-2 Incident
U-2 Incident, (1960), confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. -
Bay of Pigs
On April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. -
James Meredith
James H. Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, is shot by a sniper shortly after beginning a lone civil rights march through the South. -
Cuban Missile Crisis,
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. ... Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. -
Gideon v. Wainwright
Wainwright, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 18, 1963, ruled (9–0) that states are required to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants charged with a felony. -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Great Society
In 1965, the first session of the Eighty-Ninth Congress created the core of the Great Society. The Johnson Administration submitted 87 bills to Congress, and Johnson signed 84, or 96%, arguably the most successful legislative agenda in US congressional history. -
Miranda v. Arizona
In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court ruled that detained criminal suspects, prior to police questioning, must be informed of their constitutional right to an attorney and against self-incrimination. Miranda was not informed of his rights prior to the police interrogation. -
Thurgood Marshall
On June 13, 1967, Johnson nominated Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark. ... During his 24 years on the high court, Associate Justice Marshall consistently challenged discrimination based on race or sex, opposed the death penalty and vehemently defended affirmative action. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. -
MLK, Jr. Assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. -
SALT
SALT I is considered the crowning achievement of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente. The ABM Treaty limited strategic missile defenses to 200 interceptors each and allowed each side to construct two missile defense sites, one to protect the national capital, the other to protect one ICBM field. -
Massive Demonstrations Against Vietnam War
The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a massive demonstration and teach-in across the United States against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. It took place on October 15, 1969, followed a month later, on November 15, 1969, by a large Moratorium March in Washington, D.C. -
Kent State Shooting
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre, were the killings of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio, 40 miles south of Cleveland. -
Nixon Opens Relation with China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and mainland China after years of diplomatic isolation. -
Nixon Resigns
By late 1973, Watergate escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support. On August 9, 1974, facing almost certain impeachment and removal from office, he became the first American president to resign. Afterwards, he was issued a pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. -
South Vietnam Falls to Communists
On April 30, 1975, Saigon, capital of the Republic of Vietnam, falls to Communist troops from North Vietnam, marking the end of the Vietnam War. Active U.S. involvement in the conflict had ended in 1973 with a cease-fire agreement between the parties, but fighting continued between North and South Vietnam. -
American Hostages in Iran Released
The Iran hostage crisis negotiations were negotiations in 1980 and 1981 between the United States Government and the Iranian Government to end the Iranian hostage crisis. The 52 American hostages, seized from the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, were finally released on 20 January 1981. -
Strategic Defense Initiative
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an anti-ballistic missile program that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space. Otherwise known as “Star Wars,” SDI sought to create a space-based shield that would render nuclear missiles obsolete. -
Iran-Contra Arms Deal
Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled. East German leaders had tried to calm mounting protests by loosening the borders, making travel easier for East Germans. -
Germany Reunified
A unification treaty was ratified by the Bundestag and the People's Chamber in September and went into effect on October 3, 1990. The German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic as five additional Länder, and the two parts of divided Berlin became one Land. -
Breakup of the USSR
The dissolution of the Soviet Union[b] (1988–1991) was the process of internal disintegration within the Soviet Union, which began with growing unrest in its various constituent republics developing into an incessant political and legislative conflict between the republics and the central government, and ended when the leaders of three primal republics (the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR) declared it no longer existed -
Operation Desert Strom
The Gulf War was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes