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1492
Columbus discovered America
Columbus set sail to find a new route to India. Instead he miscalculated the size of the globe, and wound up in Latin America. This is why latter settlers called the natives Indians. -
The Jamestown Settlement
Sent from England, and led by Capt. John Smith. -
French and Indian War
Named, not because the French were battling the Indians, but because the French and Indians were waging war on Britain and was fought in the New World. Ended in 1763. -
Boston Massacre
Outbreak of violence between townspeople and the British guards, resulting in the death of numerous civilians. -
Boston Tea Party
Protest of the tax on tea imposed by England. -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
First shot of the war fired, yet is still unknown who fired it. -
Signing of the Declaration of Independence
The Declaration was signed on July 2, 1776. -
The Battle of York Town
The American's blocked off the British attackers, and it resulted in their surrender. -
The Constitutional Convention
It was the introduction to the Congress of the Constitution. -
The Alien and Sedition Acts
A series of laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the Federalist Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. - Wikipedia -
The invention of the Cotton Gin
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. - Wikipedia -
The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs. - Wikipedia -
War of 1812
The War of 1812 (1812–1815) was a conflict fought between the United States and the United Kingdom and their respective allies. - Wikipedia -
The Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. - Wikipedia -
Andrew Jackson's Election
The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a re-match between incumbent President John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, who won a plurality of the electoral college vote in the 1824 election. - Wikipedia -
The invention of the Telegraph
Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber built the first electromagnetic telegraph used for regular communication in 1833 in Göttingen, connecting Göttingen Observatory and the Institute of Physics, covering a distance of about 1 km. - Wikipedia -
Panic of 2837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. - Wikipedia -
The Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native American nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. - Wikipedia (1839-1850) -
The Mexican American War
The Mexican-American war was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. It followed in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory in spite of its de facto secession in the 1836 Texas Revolution. - Wikipedia -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). - Wikipedia -
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally free. - wikipedia -
Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. - History.com -
Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
On April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg. he rallied his remaining troops and met the North. But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end. -History.com -
The 13th. 14th, and 15th Amendments
The Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the Civil War. - Wikipedia -
Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment
On February 24, 1868 three days after Johnson's dismissal of Stanton, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 in favor of a resolution to impeach the President for high crimes and misdemeanors. One week later, the House adopted eleven articles of impeachment against the President. - Wikipedia -
The Organization of Standard Oil Trust
Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refinery in the world of its time. The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors. -
The Invention of the Telephone
The first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876, when Bell spoke into the device, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." and Watson answered. Because a liquid transmitter was not practical for commercial products, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone after March 1876 and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use. - Wikipedia -
The Invention of the Electric Light
In 1878, Edison began working on a system of electrical illumination, something he hoped could compete with gas and oil based lighting. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Alessandro Volta's demonstration of a glowing wire in 1800 and inventions by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. The first successful test was on October 22, 1879; it lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and on November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 -Wikipedia -
The Pullman and Homestead Strikes
The Pullman and Homestead Strikes 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. -
The Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba. - Wikipedia -
Theodore Roosevelt becomes president
The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt began on September 14, 1901, when he became the 26th President of the United States upon the assassination and death of President William McKinley, and ended on March 4, 1909. - Wikipedia -
The Invention of the Airplane
Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors and pioneers of aviation. In 1903 the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight; they surpassed their own milestone 2 years later when they built and flew the first fully practical airplane.on December 17, 1903, they succeeded in flying the first free, controlled flight of an air plane. Wilbur flew their plane for 59 seconds, at 852 feet, an extraordinary achievement. -History.com
