U.S. History

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    American Civil War

    The American Civil War was a civil war that was fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. As a result of the long-standing controversy over slavery, war broke out in April 1861, when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, shortly after U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated.
  • Homestead Act

    Homestead Act
    The Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land.
  • 13th Amendment

    13th Amendment
    Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
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    Reconstruction

    The Reconstruction era was the period from 1863 (the legal end of slavery) or 1865 (the end of the Confederacy) to 1877. In the context of the history of the United States, the term has two applications: the first applies to the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the Civil War (1861 to 1865); the second applies to the attempted transformation of the Southern United States from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Congress.
  • 14th Amendment

    14th Amendment
    All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
  • Transcontinental Railroad Completed

    Transcontinental Railroad Completed
    On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, signaling the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad had long been a dream for people living in the American West.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson
    Plessy v. Ferguson, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.
  • Industrialization Begins to Boom

    Industrialization Begins to Boom
    The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840.
  • 15th Amendment

    15th 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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
  • Boss Tweed rise at Tammany Hall

    Boss Tweed rise at Tammany Hall
    William Magear Tweed often erroneously referred to as "William Marcy Tweed", and widely known as "Boss" Tweed was an American politician most notable for being the "boss" of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th century New York City and State.
  • Telephone Invented

    Telephone Invented
    A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be heard directly.
  • Reconstruction Ends

    Reconstruction Ends
    With the compromise, the Republicans had quietly given up their fight for racial equality and blacks' rights in the south. In 1877, Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the south, and the bayonet-backed Republican governments collapsed, thereby ending Reconstruction.
  • Jim Crow Laws Start in South

    Jim Crow Laws Start in South
    Jim Crow law. Jim Crow law, in U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
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    Gilded Age

    The term for this period came into use in the 1920s and 1930s and was derived from writer Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding.
  • Light Bulb Invented

    Light Bulb Invented
    Thomas Edison invented the first ever light bulb.
  • Third Wave of Immigration

    Third Wave of Immigration
    The third major wave of immigration has significantly impacted the state's population. Beginning in 1965 and intensifying in 1990, more than 44 million immigrants have arrived in the United States during the current wave.
  • Chinese Exclusion Act

    Chinese Exclusion Act
    It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A.
  • Pendleton Act

    Pendleton Act
    Is 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.
  • Dawes Act

    Dawes Act
    Authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians.
  • Interstate Commerce Act

    Interstate Commerce Act
    The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices.
  • Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth

    Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth
    "Wealth", more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich.
  • Klondike Gold Rush

    Klondike Gold Rush
    The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899.
  • Sherman Anti-Trust Act

    Sherman Anti-Trust Act
    The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7) 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.
  • Homestead Steel Labor Strike

    Homestead Steel Labor Strike
    The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead Steel strike, Pinkerton rebellion, or Homestead massacre, was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892.
  • Pullman Labor Strike

    Pullman Labor 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. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.
  • Wright Brother’s Airplane

    Wright Brother’s Airplane
    Buoyant over the success of their 1902 glider, the Wright brothers were no longer content to merely add to the growing body of aeronautical knowledge; they were going to invent the airplane.
  • Model-T

    Model-T
    The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie, Leaping Lena, or flivver) is an automobile produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927.
  • Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

    Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
    The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip.
  • Trench Warfare, Poison Gas, and Machine Guns

    Trench Warfare, Poison Gas, and Machine Guns
    Able to crush barbed wire and cross trenches, tanks moved forward through machine gun fire and often terrified German soldiers with their unstoppable approach. Chemical warfare first appeared when the Germans used poison gas during a surprise attack in Flanders, Belgium, in 1915.
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    World War I

    World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918.
  • Sinking of the Lusitania

    Sinking of the Lusitania
    The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 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.
  • Zimmerman Telegram

    Zimmerman Telegram
    The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable) 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.
  • Russian Revolution

    Russian Revolution
    The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union.
  • U.S. entry into WWI

    U.S. entry into WWI
    U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. ... The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.
  • Battle of Argonne Forest

    Battle of Argonne Forest
    The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, also known as the Maas-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from 26 September 1918 until the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a total of 47 days.
  • Armistice

    Armistice
    An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, since it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.
  • Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points

    Woodrow Wilson’s 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.
  • Treaty of Versailles

    Treaty of Versailles
    The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers.
  • Red Scare

    Red Scare
    A "Red Scare" is promotion of widespread fear by a society or state about a potential rise of communism, anarchism, or radical leftism. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States with this name.
  • President Harding's Return to Normalcy

    President Harding's Return to Normalcy
    Return to normalcy, a return to the way of life before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920.
  • Harlem Renaissance

    Harlem Renaissance
    The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke.
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    Roaring Twenties

    The Roaring Twenties was the period of Western society and Western culture that occurred during and around the 1920s.
  • Teapot Dome Scandal

    Teapot Dome Scandal
    The Teapot Dome Scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding.
  • Joseph Stalin Leads USSR

    Joseph Stalin Leads USSR
    Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian-born Soviet revolutionary and political leader.
  • Scopes "Monkey" Trail

    Scopes "Monkey" Trail
    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 substitute 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.
  • Charles Lindbergh's Trans-Atlantic Flight

    Charles Lindbergh's Trans-Atlantic Flight
    5:22pm - The Spirit of St. Louis touches down at the Le Bourget Aerodrome, Paris, France. Local time: 10:22pm. Total flight time: 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds. Charles Lindbergh had not slept in 55 hours.
  • St. Valentine's Day Massacre

    St. Valentine's Day Massacre
    The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is the name given to the 1929 murder in Chicago of seven men of the North Side gang during the Prohibition Era.
  • Stock Market Crashes "Black Tuesday"

    Stock Market Crashes "Black Tuesday"
    The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29),[1] the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States (acting as the most significant predicting indicator of the Great Depression), when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its after effects.
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    Great Depression

    The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, originating in the United States.
  • Hoovervilles

    Hoovervilles
    A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States of America. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States of America during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it.
  • Smoot-Hawley Tariff

    Smoot-Hawley Tariff
    The Tariff Act of 1930, otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act implementing protectionist trade policies sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930.
  • 100,000 Banks Have Failed

    100,000 Banks Have Failed
    So here's a rundown on what's covered – what's not covered – by the FDIC, or Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. You've no doubt already heard that the FDIC generally insures deposits of up to $100,000 in FDIC-insured banks. (If you're not sure whether your bank is FDIC-insured, you can find out on their Web site.
  • Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA)

    Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA)
    The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses.
  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

    Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation providing deposit insurance to depositors in US banks.
  • Public Works Administration (PWA)

    Public Works Administration (PWA)
    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.
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    Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
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    New Deal Programs

    The Federal Emergency Relief Administration is created, via the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, to provide work and cash relief for Americans struggling to get through the Great Depression. May 12, 1933: President Roosevelt signs into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
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    Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
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    New Deal Programs

    The Federal Emergency Relief Administration is created, via the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, to provide work and cash relief for Americans struggling to get through the Great Depression. May 12, 1933: President Roosevelt signs into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
  • Dust Bowl

    Dust Bowl
    The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon.
  • Social Security Administration (SSA)

    Social Security Administration (SSA)
    The United States Social Security Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability, and survivors' benefits.
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    World War II

    World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier.
  • Tuskegee Airmen

    Tuskegee Airmen
    The Tuskegee Airmen is the popular name of a group of African-American military pilots who fought in World War II. Officially, they formed the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Forces.
  • Navajo Code Talkers

    Navajo Code Talkers
    The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I.
  • Executive Order 9066

    Executive Order 9066
    Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942.
  • Bataan Death March

    Bataan Death March
    The Bataan Death March (Filipino: Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan; Japanese, Hepburn: Batān Shi no Kōshin) was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains.
  • Invasion of Normandy

    Invasion of Normandy
    The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France, on 6 June 1944.
  • GI Bill

    GI Bill
    On June 22, 1944, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, was signed into law. During the war, politicians wanted to avoid the postwar confusion about veterans' benefits that became a political football in the 1920s and 1930s.
  • Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima

    Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
    During the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively.
  • Liberation of Concentration Camps

    Liberation of Concentration Camps
    Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers.
  • Victory in Europe (VE) Day

    Victory in Europe (VE) Day
    Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces.
  • Germany Divided

    Germany Divided
    As a consequence of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, Germany was cut between the two global blocs in the East and West, a period known as the division of Germany.
  • Victory over Japan/Pacific (VJ/VP) Day

    Victory over Japan/Pacific (VJ/VP) Day
    Victory over Japan Day (also known as V-J Day, Victory in the Pacific Day, or V-P Day) is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war. ... On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
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    Harry S. Truman

    Harry S. Truman was an American statesman who served as the 33rd President of the United States, taking the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  • Nuremberg Trials

    Nuremberg Trials
    The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II.
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    Baby Boom

    Baby Boom Generation. The term "Baby Boom" is used to identify a massive increase in births following World War II. Baby boomers are those people born worldwide between 1946 and 1964, the time frame most commonly used to define them.
  • Truman Doctrine

    Truman Doctrine
    The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey.
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    The Cold War

    The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc.
  • Marshall Plan

    Marshall Plan
    The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13,000,000,000 in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II.
  • Berlin Airlift

    Berlin Airlift
    The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control
  • NATO Formed

    NATO Formed
    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European states based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949
  • UN forces push North Korea to Yalu River- the border with China

    UN forces push North Korea to Yalu River- the border with China
    Those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces rapidly approached the Yalu River—the border with China—but in October 1950, mass Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war. The surprise Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951
  • Chinese forces cross Yalu and enter Korean War

    Chinese forces cross Yalu and enter Korean War
    Korea was ruled by Imperial Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Imperial Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south.
  • Kim Il-sung invades South Korea

    Kim Il-sung invades South Korea
    Kim Il-sung was the leader of North Korea from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Premier from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to 1994. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994 titled chairman from 1949 to 1966 and general secretary after 1966.
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    Korean War

    The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border.
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    1950s Prosperity

    During the Eisenhower era, Americans achieved a level of prosperity they'd never known before. While other parts of the world struggled to rebuild from the devastation of World War II, citizens of the United States saw their standard of living surpass what previous generations had only dreamed about.
  • Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Execution

    Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Execution
    Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War.
  • Armistice Signed

    Armistice Signed
    The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice that ended fighting on land, sea and air in World War I between the Allies and their last opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had eliminated Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    As supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower led the massive invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe that began on D-Day (June 6, 1944).
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    Warren Court

    The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until he retired in 1969. Warren was succeeded as Chief Justice by Warren Burger.
  • Hernandez v. Texas

    Hernandez v. Texas
    Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 was a landmark case, "the first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period."
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education
    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
  • Ho Chi Minh Established Communist Rule in Vietnam

    Ho Chi Minh Established Communist Rule in Vietnam
    He helped found the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or Viet Minh, in 1941. At World War II's end, Viet Minh forces seized the northern Vietnamese city of Hanoi and declared a Democratic State of Vietnam (or North Vietnam) with Ho as president.
  • Warsaw Pact Formed

    Warsaw Pact Formed
    The Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
  • Polio Vaccine

    Polio Vaccine
    Polio vaccines are vaccines used to prevent poliomyelitis (polio). There are two types: one that uses inactivated poliovirus and is given by injection, and one that uses weakened poliovirus and is given by mouth.
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    Vietnam War

    The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam.
  • Elvis Presley First Hit Song

    Elvis Presley First Hit Song
    February 1956. As "Heartbreak Hotel" makes its climb up the charts on its way to #1, "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" b/w "Mystery Train," Elvis' fifth and last single to be released on the Sun label, hits #1 on Billboard's national country singles chart. His first #1 hit on a national chart.
  • Interstate Highway Act

    Interstate Highway Act
    The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. It took several years of wrangling, but a new Federal-Aid Highway Act passed in June 1956. The law authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile network of interstate highways that would span the nation.
  • Sputnik I

    Sputnik I
    Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses.
  • Leave it to Beaver First Airs on TV

    Leave it to Beaver First Airs on TV
    American television sitcom about an inquisitive and often naïve boy, Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver (portrayed by Jerry Mathers), and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood. The show also starred Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont as Beaver's parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and Tony Dow as Beaver's brother Wally.
  • Kennedy versus Nixon TV Debate

    Kennedy versus Nixon TV Debate
    The United States presidential election of 1960 was the 44th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee.
  • Peace Corps Formed

    Peace Corps Formed
    The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand American culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries.
  • Bay of Pigs Invasion

    Bay of Pigs Invasion
    Image result for • Bay of Pigs Invasionen.wikipedia.org
    On April 17, 1961, 1400 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.
  • Mapp v. Ohio

    Mapp v. Ohio
    was a landmark case in criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," may not be used in state law criminal prosecutions in state courts, as well as in federal criminal law prosecutions in federal courts as had previously been the law.
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    John F. Kennedy

    John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963.
  • Cuban Missile Crisis

    Cuban Missile Crisis
    The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American.
  • Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas, Texas

    Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas, Texas
    John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza.
  • Gideon v. Wainwright

    Gideon v. Wainwright
    Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In it, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states are required under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel (Attorneys) in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys.
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    Lyndon B. Johnson

    August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after having served as the 37th Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963.
  • The Great Society

    The Great Society
    Image result for • The Great Society
    The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.
  • Escobedo v. Illinois

    Escobedo v. Illinois
    Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, was a United States Supreme Court case holding that criminal suspects have a right to counsel during police interrogations under the Sixth Amendment.
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
  • Miranda v. Arizona

    Miranda v. Arizona
    was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. In a 5–4 majority, the Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination.
  • Thurgood Marshall Appointed to Supreme Court

    Thurgood Marshall Appointed to Supreme Court
    In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the United States Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark.
  • My Lai Massacre

    My Lai Massacre
    The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in South Vietnam on 16 March 1968.
  • Tet Offensive

    Tet Offensive
    North Vietnam and the NLF, was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies.
  • Tinker v. Des Moines

    Tinker v. Des Moines
    Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools.
  • Manson Family Murders

    Manson Family Murders
    The Manson Family was a commune established in California in the late 1960s, led by Charles Manson. They gained national notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on August 9, 1969 by Tex Watson and three other members of the Family, acting under the instructions of Charles Manson.
  • Apollo 11

    Apollo 11
    Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC.
  • Vietnamization

    Vietnamization
    The US policy of withdrawing its troops and transferring the responsibility and direction of the war effort to the government of South Vietnam.
  • Woodstock Music Festival

    Woodstock Music Festival
    The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock— was a music festival in the United States in 1969 which attracted an audience of more than 400,000.
  • Draft Lottery

    Draft Lottery
    The NBA Draft lottery is an annual event held by the National Basketball Association (NBA), in which the teams who had missed the playoffs that previous year participate in a lottery process to determine the draft order in the NBA draft.
  • Manson Family Murders

    Manson Family Murders
    The Manson Family was a commune established in California in the late 1960s, led by Charles Manson. They gained national notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on August 9, 1969 by Tex Watson and three other members of the Family, acting under the instructions of Charles Manson.
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    Richard Nixon

    Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 until 1974, when he resigned from office, the only U.S. president to do so.
  • Invasion of Cambodia

    Invasion of Cambodia
    The Cambodian Campaign was a series of military operations conducted in eastern Cambodia during 1970 by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam as an extension of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War.
  • Kent State Shootings

    Kent State Shootings
    The Kent State shootings were on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces.
  • Pentagon Papers

    Pentagon Papers
    Learn about the 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, a secret U.S. government document about the history of the Vietnam War, which turned public opinion against the conflict and influenced many Americans' views of politics.
  • 26th Amendment

    26th Amendment
    The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old.
  • War Powers Resolution

    War Powers Resolution
    The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. 1541–1548) is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.
  • Fall of Saigon

    Fall of Saigon
    The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975.