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U-boats created
The first submarine built in Germany was the three-man Brandtaucher, which sank to the bottom of Kiel harbor during its first test dive. The vessel was designed in 1850 by the inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer and built by Schweffel and Howaldt in Kiel. -
The Bessemer Process
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open-hearth furnace. The key principle is the removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. -
Discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak
Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near the mouth of Little Dry Creek that yielded about 20 troy ounces (622 grams) of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region. -
Morrill Land grant act
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or seizure. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead -
Transcontinental r/r completed
The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad May 10, 1869, is recognized as one of our country's biggest achievements and one of mankind's biggest accomplishments -
Statue of Liberty built
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. -
Battle of little bighorn
The battle was a momentary victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne. The death of Custer and his troops became a rallying point for the United States to increase their efforts to force native peoples onto reservation lands. -
Farmers alliance created
The Farmers' Alliance was first organized in Texas in the mid-1870s and soon spread to other states and territories in the South and Midwest. One of the group's main goals was to form cooperatives. Farmers set up cooperatively owned retail stores and marketing organizations. -
Thomas edison invents light bulb
By January 1879, at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison had built his first high-resistance, incandescent electric light. It worked by passing electricity through a thin platinum filament in the glass vacuum bulb, which delayed the filament from melting. -
Carlisle school established
Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, opened in 1879 as the first government-run boarding school for Native American children. The goal? Forced assimilation of Native children into white American society under the belief of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” -
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. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States -
Edison lights up NYC
1882 was an important year for Edison in New York City, the year when he lit up Manhattan. His company flipped the switch on his Pearl Street power station on September 4, 1882, providing hundreds of homes with electricity. -
Interstate commerce act passed
On February 4, 1887, both the Senate and House passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which applied the Constitution's “Commerce Clause”—granting Congress the power “to Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”—to regulating railroad rates. -
American federation of labor founded
The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL–CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor. -
Dawes act
Dawes Act (1887) | National Archives
Also known as the General Allotment Act, the law authorized the President to break up reservation land, which was held in common by the members of a tribe, into small allotments to be parceled out to individuals. Thus, Native Americans registering on a tribal "roll" were granted allotments of reservation land. -
Alfred T Mahan writes his book on sea power
In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a lecturer in naval history and the President of the United States Naval War College, published The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, a revolutionary analysis of the importance of naval power as a factor in the rise of the British Empire. -
Sherman ant-trust act passed
Approved July 2, 1890, The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices. The Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 was the first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts. -
Jacob Riis published his book of photos
While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the poor living conditions of poor people by exposing these conditions to the middle and upper classes. -
Wounded knee massacre
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army. -
Fredrick Jackson Turner writes essay of settling the west
In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented a paper at the American Historical Association in Chicago. Titled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," Turner's work came to be known as simply the Turner Thesis or American Frontiers -
Pullman strike
Pullman Strike, (May 11, 1894–c. July 20, 1894), in U.S. history, widespread railroad strike and boycott that severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest of the United States in June–July 1894. The federal government's response to the unrest marked the first time that an injunction was used to break a strike. -
Plessy v Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". -
Holden v hardy
Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366, is a U.S. labor law case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held a limitation on working time for miners and smelters as constitutional. -
Spanish American War begins
The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. -
Hawaii is annexed
On July 7, 1898, the Hawaiian Islands were annexed by this joint resolution. When the Hawaiian islands were formally annexed by the United States in 1898, the event marked the end of a lengthy internal struggle between native Hawaiians and non-native American businessmen for control of the Hawaiian government. -
Phillipines islands are annexed
In Paris on December 10, 1898, the United States paid Spain $20 million to annex the entire Philippine archipelago. The outraged Filipinos, led by Aguinaldo, prepared for war. Once again, MacArthur was thrust to the fore and distinguished himself in the field as he led American forces in quashing the rebellion. -
Newlands Reclamation act
The Reclamation Act of 1902 is a United States federal law that funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 20 states in the American West. The act at first covered only 13 of the western states as Texas had no federal lands. Texas was added later by a special act passed in 1906. -
Panama Canal is built
The Panama Canal is an artificial 82 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. -
Hepner act
The Hepburn Act of 1906 was a bill that fortified the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and strengthened federal regulation of railroads. -
Lochner v New York
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court holding that a New York State statute that prescribed maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -
Sinclair’s the Jungle written
The Jungle is a fictional novel by American muckraker author Upton Sinclair, known for his efforts to expose corruption in government and business in the early 20th century. -
Pure Food and drug act passed
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce and laid a foundation for the nation's first consumer protection agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I have here several adulterated articles. -
Muller V Oregon
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate fewer work hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether a woman's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's. -
Founding of the NAACP
The NAACP was created in 1909 by an interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot. -
Ford Motor company's first full assembly line starts
The Ford Motor Company team decided to try to implement the moving assembly line in the automobile manufacturing process. After much trial and error, in 1913 Henry Ford and his employees successfully began using this innovation at our Highland Park assembly plant. -
17th amendment
"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branches of the State legislatures. -
Federal Reserve act
The 1913 Federal Reserve Act created the Federal Reserve System, known simply as "The Fed." It was implemented to establish economic stability in the U.S. by introducing a central bank to oversee monetary policy. 1 The Federal Reserve Act is one of the most influential laws shaping the U.S. financial system. -
Clayton Antitrust act
The Clayton Act made both substantive and procedural modifications to federal antitrust law. Substantively, the act seeks to capture anticompetitive practices in their incipiency by prohibiting particular types of conduct, not deemed in the best interest of a competitive market. -
Beginning of the first world war
The Beginning of World War I | Facing History & Ourselves
The spark that set off World War I came on June 28, 1914, when a young Serbian patriot shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Austria), in the city of Sarajevo. The assassin was a supporter of the Kingdom of Serbia, and within a month the Austrian army invaded Serbia. -
Lusitania Sunk
The RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about 11 nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. -
Selective service act
On May 18, 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which authorized the Federal Government to temporarily expand the military through conscription. The act eventually required all men between the ages of 21 to 45 to register for military service. -
US enters WWI
On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917. -
WWI ends
On Nov. 11, 1918, after more than four years of horrific fighting and the loss of millions of lives, the guns on the Western Front fell silent. Although fighting continued elsewhere, the armistice between Germany and the Allies was the first step to ending World War I. -
18th Amendment
The 18th Amendment (PDF, 91KB) to the Constitution prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors..." and was ratified by the states on January 16, 1919. The movement to prohibit alcohol began in the United States in the early nineteenth century. -
19th 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 sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by legislation. -
Immigration quota act
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. -
National origins act
The National Origins Act authorized the formation of the United States Border Patrol, which was established two days after the act was passed -
Scopes trial
The Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925