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Jan 1, 1500
Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock
In the 1500s, Europeans began to come to North America. Some Europeans came looking for gold or land. Others came to find religious freedom. Many Africans were brought by the colonies by work force to work as slaves. -
Boston Massacre
Tensions between the American colonists and the British were already running high in the early spring of 1770. Late in the afternoon, on March 5, a crowd of jeering Bostonians slinging snowballs gathered around a small group of British soldiers guarding the Boston Customs House. The soldiers became enraged after one of them had been hit, and they fired into the crowd, even though they were under orders not to fire. Five colonists were shot and killed. -
Revolutionary War
In 1775, the Revoultionary War began, and in 1776, the colonies proclaimed their freedom in the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jerfferson. By 1783, the United States had won the war against Great Britain and become a new nation. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 to proclaim the colonies' freedom from Great Britain and was written by Thomas Jefferson. -
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th century to the 19th century where major changes in the agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and technology began. -
Louisiana Purchase
In 1803, Predsident Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana, a large territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from France. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States. -
Civil War
From the nation's beginning, some Americans wanted to end slavery. In time, the country split into opposing sides: Northern free states and Southern slave states. The South came to believe that states had the right to reject federal laws and even to secede from the Union. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a Northerner who hated slavery, was elected president. In response, 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America. Fighting broke out and the Civil War began. -
Lincoln's Assassination
Booth is the only man of the plot who succeeded. The details are well known to every American school kid. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44 caliber Derringer, percussion-cap pistol, during a performance of “Our American Cousin,” at Ford’s Theater in Washington D. C. He then leaped to the stage, breaking his left fibula, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and may have shouted, “The South is avenged!” -
World War I
When World War I started in Europe in 1914, most Americans wanted to stay out of the fighting. Then Germany sank a number of ships, killing U.S. civilians. The United States joined the war in 1917 and help the Allies to win it. -
Dust Bowl
Life was hard in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Mostly because this was an area in the Great Plains that suffered drought and dust storms. -
The Great Depression
After the war, the 1920s seemed to be an era of wealth and progress. But problems lurked behind the good times. In 1929, stock prices plunged and many people lost their money. That began the Great Depression, a period of severe economic decline (1929-early 1940s) in the United States. Buisnesses failed and millions were out of work. -
Cold War
The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after WW2 between the powers of Western Bloc and the U.S. -
10-11
On September 11, 2001, Terroists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon. Approximately 3,000 people died. The U.S. government responded by launching a war against terroism. -
First Black President: Barack Obama
He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2008. Nine months after his election, Obama was named the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
