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American Revolution
The American Revolution (1775-83) is also known as the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. War of Independence. The conflict arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain's 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. -
Deceleration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Second Continental Congress, states the reasons the British colonies of North America sought independence in July of 1776. -
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 -
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War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom, and their respective allies -
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Mexican/American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War in the United States and in Mexico as the American intervention in Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. -
Battle of Antietam
But the single bloodiest day in American military history fell on March 23, 1862: the date of the battle of Antietam, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. Forces of Union General George McClellan and the Confederate troops of General Robert E. Lee met in a daylong pitched battle. -
Spanish- American War
The Spanish–American War was fought between the United States and Spain in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence -
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WWI
World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). -
Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is an artificial 77 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade -
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. -
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Naval disarmament
The Washington Naval Conference, was the most successful diplomatic venture in the 1920s. It was held in Washington, under the Chairmanship of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. -
Dawes Plan
Dawes plan. a plan to ensure payments of reparations by Germany after World War I, devised by an international committee headed by Charles Gates Dawes and put into effect in 1924. -
Kellogg-Brand Pact
The Kellogg–Briand Pact (or Pact of Paris, officially General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) is a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts. -
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Great Depression
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. -
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Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil Española), widely known in Spain simply as The Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil) or The War (Spanish: La Guerra), took place from 1936 to 1939. -
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WWII
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. -
Pearl Harbor
President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." On that day, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. The bombing killed more than 2,300 Americans. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway, fought in World War II, took place on June 5, 1942 (June 4-June 7 in US time zones). The United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the war in the Pacific theatre. -
D-Day
Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France's Normandy region. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. -
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization established on 24 October 1945 to promote international cooperation. It was founded to replace the League of Nations following World War II and to prevent another conflict. -
Rio Pact
The Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (commonly known as the Rio Treaty, the Rio Pact, or by the Spanish-language acronym TIAR from Tratado Interamericano de Asistencia Recíproca) was an agreement signed in 1947 in Rio de Janeiro among many countries of the Americas. -
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Cold War
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were the world's strongest nations. They were called superpowers. They had different ideas about economics and government. They fought a war of ideas called the Cold War. -
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 -
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Berlin Blockade
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
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European countries based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. -
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Korean War
A war, also called the Korean conflict, fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The war began in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and also known in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, -
Bay of Pigs
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. -
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Berlin Wall
A wall that separated West Berlin, Germany, from East Germany, which surrounded it until 1989. -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba; one of the “hottest” periods of the cold war. -
Detente (Nixon)
(a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party. -
SALT I and II
Amidst the Cold War, a series of treaties was issued under the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty to curtail the build up of nuclear weapons. -
Camp David Accord
a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt issuing from talks at Camp David between Egyptian President Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Begin, and the host, U.S. President Carter: signed in 1979. -
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Persian Gulf War
The Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Shield for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition ... -
Operation Desert Storm
Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation Desert Storm. -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. -
9/11
On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin 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. -
War on Terror
The War on Terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism, is an international military campaign that was launched by the U.S. government after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001 -
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Iraq War
The first of these was a brief, conventionally fought war in March–April 2003, in which a combined force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with smaller contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and rapidly defeated Iraqi military and paramilitary forces.
