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The invention of the Model T
The first production Model T Ford was completed at the company's Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit on October 1st, 1908. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build around 15 million Model T cars. The longest production run of any automobile until the Volkswagen Beetle. -
The Zimmermann Telegram
The Zimmermann Telegram (otherwise known as the Zimmermann note) was a internal diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January of 1917. The note proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the event of the United States entering WWI against Germany. -
The WWI Armistice
Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11th, 1918. The infusion of American troops and resources into the western front tipped the scale in the Allies favor. By Germany signing this armistice, it meant the war was officially over. -
The 19th Amendment
The U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote. This right was also known as Women's suffrage. -
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Charles Lindbergh’s Flight
On May 21st, 1927, Charles Lindbergh lands safely in Paris aboard his single-seat monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis. He had successfully completed the world's first 36 hour nonstop transatlantic flight. With this successful flight, he changed the public opinion on the value of air travel and laid the foundation for future aviation. -
Black Thursday
'Black Thursday' is the name given to the Thursday or October 24th, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 11% at the open in very heavy volume, prompting the Wall Street crash of 1929, and The Great Depression of the 1930s. -
Hitler becomes chancellor
1932 was a big year in Hitler's campaigning in Germany. Spurred largely by the German people's frustration with dismal economic' conditions and the suffering inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harse peace terms in the Versailles Treaty. On this day in 1933, President Paul Von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler, leader or fÜhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany. -
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The New Deal
The New Deal was as series of domestic programs enacting in the U.S. between 1933 and 1938. They include both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. -
The Munich Pact
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. -
Hitler Invades Poland
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was an American naval base outside of Honolulu, Hawaii. On December 7th, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the base. The barrage lasted just two hours, but the aftermath, as stated by President Roosevelt, is a day that will live in infamy. -
The formation of NATO
On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter, pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace. -
D-Day
Also known as the Normandy Landings, they were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June, 1944 of the Allied invasions of Normandy in Operation Overload during WWII. -
Hiroshima & Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. -
The Long Telegram
George Kennan wrote the Long Telegram in reply to Washington, outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets. The reply arrived in Washington February 22nd, 1946. -
The formation of NATO
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. -
Russians acquire the Atomic Bomb
Nearly two years after America bombs Japan, the Soviet Union detonated their own in August 1949, which was much sooner than expected. -
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The Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Brown v. Board of Education
On this day, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. -
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The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occured in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of Norht Bietnam and its southen allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The divisive war, incrreasingly unpopular at home, ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under Communist control two years later. -
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat
After a long day of work as a seamstress for a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, Rosa Parks boards a city bus to go home. As she walks past a few rows of empty seating marked "Whites only", she finally settles for a spot in the middle of the bus. African American people were alloed to sit in this section as long as no white person is standing. When all the white only seats were taken, and one more white person boarded the bus, Parks refused to move for them to sit. -
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Watergate break-ins
The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile politics of the 1960s. By 1972, when Republican President Richard Nixon was running for re-election, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War and deeply divide internally. In such a harsh political climate, a forceful presidential campaign seemed essential to the president and some of his key advisers. Their aggressive tactics included what turned out to be illegal espionage. -
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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 over Soviet ballistic missile deployed in Cuba. -
JFK’s Assassination
In the afternoon of November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. They were preparing for the next presidential campaign. -
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7th, 1964, in respinse to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. -
The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
The primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961; perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth. Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16th, 1969, carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Commander Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin into an initial Earth-orbit of 114 by 116 miles. An estimated 530 million people watched Armstrong's televised image and heard his voice describe the event. -
Nixon's Resignation
President Nixon said he decided he must resign when he concluded that he no longer had "a strong enough political base in the Congress" to make it possible for for him to complete his term in office. -
The invention of the Internet
ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on this day, and from there researchers began to assemble the "network of networks" that became the modern internet. The outline world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
On this day, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eatern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change to his city's relations with the West. -
The 9/11 Attacks
On this day, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. These attacks resulted in extensive death and destrucion, triggering major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism.
