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Alaska is purchased from Russia
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Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
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Standard Oil
John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil company. This very company controlled some 90% of U.S. refineries and pipelines by the early 1880's. In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Standard Oil of New Jersey was in violation of anti-trust laws and forced it to disperse into more than 30 individual companies. -
Invention of the telephone
Soon after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he found himself in an almost 20-year legal battle with other inventors who claimed to have invented the telephone before or around the same time as Bell. In the end, the lawsuits proved to be unsuccessful. Within 10 years of the invention of the telephone, more than 100,000 people in the United States owned telephones. -
Thomas Edison invents light bulb
Thomas Edison was not originally an inventor. He used to travel around the country working as a telegrapher. He had developed some serious hearing problems, so with the development of auditory signals for the telegraph, he was at a disadvantage. Edison started working on inventing devices that would help make things possible for him despite being deaf. By early 1869. he quit telegraphy and began inventing full time. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
This Act was the first significant law restricting immigration into the Unites States. Even though the Chinese composed only .002% of the nations population at the time, congress still passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white "racial purity". Many Americans had attributed declining wages and economic skills to Chinese workers. -
Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL)
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Sherman Antitrust Act
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Ellis Island Opens
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Peak year of immigration through Ellis Island
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Carnegie Steel's Homestead Strike
The Homestead Strike was a violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and its workers. A gun battle resulted in a number of Pinkerton agents and strikers were killed and many were injured. The strike had won a favorable three-year contract, but after that, Carnegie was determined to break the union. -
Plessy vs Ferguson
Plessy vs Ferguson is a landmark that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation. This case stemmed from an 1892 incident where an African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to ride in a car for blacks. The Supreme court ruled that Plessy's argument (that his constitutional rights were violated) was incorrect. A law that "implies merely a legal distinction" between whites and blacks was not unconstitutional. -
U.S. declares war on Spain
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Hawaii is annexed
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Rudyard Kipling published "The White Man's Burden" in The New York Sun
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Start of the Boxer Rebellion
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Tenement Act
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President McKinley is assassinated and Theodore Roosevelt becomes president
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The Philippine Insurrection comes to an end
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The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine declares the U.S. right to intervene in the Western Hem
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Upton Sinclair releases "The Jungle"
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Pure Food & Drug Act and The Meat Inspection Act are passed
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Henry Ford produced his first Model T
The Model T was the earliest effort to make a car that most people would actually buy. The Model T was affordable and it became so popular at one point that most Americans owned one. This directly helped rural Americans become connected with the rest of the country and leading to the numbered highway system. -
Creation of the NAACP
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed 145 workers and is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American Industrial history. The deaths could have been prevented; most of the victims died as a result of safety regulations being ignored and locked doors within the factory. The tragedy of this event brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories and led to the development of laws to better secure the safety of workers. -
Assassination on Australia's archduke Franz Ferdinand starts WW1
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The Panama Canal is completed and opened for traffic
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U.S. enters WW1
When World War 1 erupted, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States. This was a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, being one of America's closest trading partners, tension soon arose between the United States and Germany. -
Ratification of 18th Amendment- Prohibition
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Women get the right to vote
Achieving the goal of women having the right to vote took decades of protest and hard work. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of women suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the constitution. Very few of the early supporters lived to see the women prevail.
