US History

By Jayda H
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    American Civil War

    The war fought in the United States between northern (Union) and southern (Confederate) states from 1861 to 1865, in which the Confederacy sought to establish itself as a separate nation. The Civil War is also known as the War for Southern Independence and as the War between the States.
  • Homestead Act

    Homestead Act
    Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land.
  • 13th Amendment

    13th Amendment
    The text of the 13th Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ... Finally, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865.
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    Reconstruction

    The period after the Civil War in which the states formerly part of the Confederacy were brought back into the United States. During Reconstruction, the South was divided into military districts for the supervision of elections to set up new state governments.
  • 14th Amendment

    14th Amendment
    The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War.
  • Transcontinental Railroad Completed

    Transcontinental Railroad Completed
    It was a continuous railroad line that connected eastern U.S. rail network with the Pacific coast on San Francisco Bay.On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, signaling the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad had long been a dream for people living in the American West.
  • Industrialization Begins to Boom

    Industrialization Begins to Boom
    The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system.
  • 15th Amendment

    15th Amendment
    The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
  • Boss Tweed rise at Tammany Hall

    Boss Tweed rise at Tammany Hall
    Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s.
  • Telephone Invented

    Telephone Invented
    The telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. A fellow inventor, Elisha Gray, invented a voice transmission system at the same time, but Bell was first to patent his invention.
  • Reconstruction Ends

    Reconstruction Ends
    The period of Reconstruction took place in the southern United States from the end of the Civil War in 1865 until 1877. The era was marked by intense controversies, which included the impeachment of a president, outbreaks of racial violence, and the passage of Constitutional amendments.
  • Jim Crow Laws Start in South

    Jim Crow Laws Start in South
    Jim Crow law, in U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. ... The term came to be a derogatory epithet for African Americans and a designation for their segregated life.
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    The Gilded Age

    The Gilded Age in United States history is the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900. The term for this period came into use in the 1920s and 1930s and was derived from writer Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding.
  • Light Bulb Invented

    Light Bulb Invented
    In 1878 Thomas Edison began trying to invent a commercial viable light bulb. In October 1878 he filed his first patent for the “improvement of an electric light bulb. A year later he filed an additional patent to create a carbon filament using "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways”.
  • Wave of Immigration

    Wave of Immigration
    The United States experienced major waves of immigration during the colonial era, the first part of the 19th century and from the 1880s to 1920. Many immigrants came to America seeking greater economic opportunity, while some, such as the Pilgrims in the early 1600s, arrived in search of religious freedom.
  • Chinese Exclusion Act

    Chinese Exclusion Act
    The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. It was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in US history, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. The act followed revisions made in 1880 to the US-China Burlingame Treaty of 1868, revisions that allowed the US to suspend Chinese immigration.
  • Pendleton Act

    Pendleton Act
    The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law, enacted in 1883, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation.
  • Dawes Act

    Dawes Act
    Dawes Act or General Allotment Act, 1887, passed by the U.S. Congress to provide for the granting of landholding to individual Native Americans, replacing communal tribal holdings.
  • Interstate Commerce Act

    Interstate Commerce Act
    The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. The Act required that railroad rates be "reasonable and just," but did not empower the government to fix specific rates.
  • Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth

    Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth
    Wealth", more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich.
  • Chicago’s Hull House

    Chicago’s Hull House
    Hull House was a settlement house in the United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located in the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, Hull House opened to recently arrived European immigrants.
  • Klondike Gold Rush

    Klondike Gold Rush
    The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899.
  • Sherman Anti-Trust Act

    Sherman Anti-Trust Act
    The Sherman Antitrust Act is a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890 under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison.
  • How the Other Half Lives

    How the Other Half Lives
    How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s.
  • Influence of Sea Power Upon History

    Influence of Sea Power Upon History
    The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660–1783 is a history of naval warfare published in 1890 by Alfred Thayer Mahan.
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    progressive era

    The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to the 1920s. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were eliminating problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and corruption in government.
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    Imperialism

    a policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means.
  • Homestead Steel Labor Strike

    Homestead Steel Labor Strike
    The Homestead Strike, also known as the Homestead Steel Strike, Pinkerton Rebellion, or Homestead Massacre, 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.
  • Pullman Labor Strike

    Pullman Labor Strike
    The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States on May 11, 1894 and a turning point for US labor law. It pitted the American Railway Union against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson
    Plessy v. Ferguson is a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1896 that upheld the rights of states to pass laws allowing or even requiring racial segregation in public and private institutions such as schools, public transportation, restrooms, and restaurants.
  • Annexation of Hawaii

    Annexation of Hawaii
    Soon after, President Benjamin Harrison submitted a treaty to annex the Hawaiian islands to the U.S. Senate for ratification. In 1897, the treaty effort was blocked when the newly-formed Hawaiian Patriotic League, composed of native Hawaiians, successfully petitioned the U.S. Congress in opposition of the treaty.
  • Spanish American War

    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 United
  • Open Door Policy

    Open Door Policy
    Open Door policy, statement of principles initiated by the United States in 1899 and 1900 for the protection of equal privileges among countries trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity.
  • assassination of president McKinley

    assassination of president McKinley
    On September 6, 1901, William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. He was shaking hands with the public when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot him twice in the abdomen.
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    Theodore Roosevelt

    Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” domestic program included a promise to battle large industrial combinations, or trusts, which threatened to restrain trade. Republican Party
  • Wright Brother's Airplane

    Wright Brother's Airplane
    Orville and Wilbur Wright, American mechanics and inventors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who achieved the first sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine — what we today call an airplane. Their flight was made at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.
  • Panama Canal U.S. Construction Begins

    Panama Canal U.S. Construction Begins
    France began work on the canal in 1881 but stopped due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project in 1904 and opened the canal on August 15, 1914.
  • The Jungle

    The Jungle
    The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities.
  • Pure Food and Drug act

    Pure Food and Drug act
    Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes.
  • Mobel-T

    Mobel-T
    The Model T, also known as the “Tin Lizzie,” changed the way Americans live, work and travel. Henry Ford’s revolutionary advancements in assembly-line automobile manufacturing made the Model T the first car to be affordable for a majority of Americans. For the first time car ownership became a reality for average American workers, not just the wealthy.
  • NAACP

    NAACP
    The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-racial organization to advance justice for African Americans by W. E. B.
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    William Howard Taft

    Republican Party William Howard Taft was truly in his element as chief executive, at least in the limited sense of that function. He loved studying legislation and implementing policy Theodore Roosevelt, Taft hated the rough of practical politics that was necessary to accomplish an agenda. His domestic legacy included the following:trust-busting, Tariff Reform,Business Regulation,Executive Reform,Constitutional Amendments,Admission of New States,Civil Service Reform, and the Congressional Reform
  • 16th amendment

    16th amendment
    The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
  • Federal Reserve Act

    Federal Reserve Act
    The Federal Reserve Act intended to establish a form of economic stability in the United States through the introduction of the Central Bank, which would be in charge of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Act is perhaps one of the most influential laws concerning the U.S. financial system.
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    Woodrow Wilson

    Democratic Party.Woodrow Wilson’s 2nd administration of two significant constitutional amendments.The era of Prohibition was ushered on January 17,1920,when the 18th Amendment,banning the manufacture,sale and transportation of alcohol,went into effect following its ratification one year earlier. In 1919,Wilson vetoed the National Prohibition Act,designed to enforce the 18th Amendment his veto was overridden.Prohibition lasted until 1933,when it was repealed by the 21st Amendment.
  • 17th amendment

    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 branch of the State legislatures.
  • Assissination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

    Assissination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
    June 28, 1914, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Trench Warfare, Poison Gas, and Machine Guns

    Trench Warfare, Poison Gas, and Machine Guns
    The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. The killing capacity of gas was limited, with only about ninety thousand fatalities from a total of some 1.2 million casualties caused by gas attacks.
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    World War 1

    World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918.
  • Sinking of the Lusitania

    Sinking of the Lusitania
    The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany.
  • National Parks System

    National Parks System
    National Park Service. The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations.
  • Zimmerman Telegram

    Zimmerman Telegram
    On this day in 1917, the text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America.
  • Russian Revolution

    Russian Revolution
    The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union.
  • U.S. entry into WWI

    U.S. entry into WWI
    U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. ... The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.
  • Battle of Argonne Forest

    Battle of Argonne Forest
    The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, also known as the Maas-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from 26 September 1918 until the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a total of 47 days.
  • Armistice

    Armistice
    The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was an armistice during the First World War between the Allies and Germany after the location in which it was signed and the agreement that ended the fighting on the Western Front.It went into effect at 11 a.m Paris time on 11 November 1918,and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany,although not a surrender.The Germans were responding to the policies proposed by U.S.President Wilson in his 14 Points of January 1918.
  • Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points

    Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points
    The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson.
  • Treaty of Versailles

    Treaty of Versailles
    The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
  • 18th amendment

    18th amendment
    After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
  • 19th amendment

    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 appropriate legislation.
  • President Harding’s Return to Normalcy

    President Harding’s Return to Normalcy
    Return to normalcy, a return to the way of life before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign promise in the election of 1920.
  • Harlem Renaissance

    Harlem Renaissance
    The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.
  • Red Scare

    Red Scare
    During the Red Scare of 1919 - 1920, many in the United States feared recent immigrants and dissidents, particularly those who embraced communist, socialist, or anarchist ideology.
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    Roaring Twenties

    The nation's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society.” ... However, for a small handful of young people in the nation's big cities, the 1920s were roaring indeed.
  • Teapot Dome Scandal

    Teapot Dome Scandal
    The Teapot Dome Scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and two other locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding.
  • Joseph Stalin Leads USSR

    Joseph Stalin Leads USSR
    Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Born into poverty, Stalin became involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young man.
  • Scopes “Monkey” Trial

    Scopes “Monkey” Trial
    In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.
    The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."
  • Mein Kampf published

    Mein Kampf published
    On this day in 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler’s philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year.
  • Charles Lindbergh’s Trans-Atlantic Flight

    Charles Lindbergh’s Trans-Atlantic Flight
    The Spirit of St. Louis carried Charles Lindbergh from New York to Paris in 33 and a half hours, the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
  • St.Valentine’s Day Massacre

    St.Valentine’s Day Massacre
    Gang warfare ruled the streets of Chicago during the late 1920s, as chief gangster Al Capone sought to consolidate control by eliminating his rivals in the illegal trades of bootlegging, gambling and prostitution. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it was known, was never officially linked to Capone, but he was generally considered to have been responsible for the murders.
  • Stock Market Crashes “Black Tuesday”

    Stock Market Crashes “Black Tuesday”
    The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29), the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States (acting as the most significant predicting indicator of the Great
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    great depression

    The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, originating in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until 1941.It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the world's economy can decline.
  • Hoovervilles

    Hoovervilles
    A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States of America. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States of America during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it.
  • Smoot-Hawley Tariff

    Smoot-Hawley Tariff
    otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act implementing protectionist trade policies sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.
  • 100, 000 Banks Have Failed

    100, 000 Banks Have Failed
    As the economic depression deepened in the early30s,and as farmers had less and less money to spend in town,banks began to fail at alarming rates.in the 20s,there was an average of 70 banks failing each year nationally.After the crash during the first 10 months of 1930, 744 banks failed 10 times as many.In all, 9,000 banks failed during the decade of the 30s.It's estimated that 4,000 banks failed during 1933 alone.By 1933,depositors saw $140 billion disappear through bank failures.
  • Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA)

    Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA)
    Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), in American history, major New Deal program to restore agricultural prosperity by curtailing farm production, reducing export surpluses, and raising prices. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (May 1933) was an omnibus farm-relief bill embodying the schemes of the major national farm organizations.
  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

    Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a United States government corporation providing deposit insurance to depositors in US banks. The FDIC was created by the 1933 Banking Act during the Great Depression (June 16 1933) to restore trust in the American banking system; more than one-third of banks failed in the years before the FDIC's creation, and bank runs were common.
  • Public Works Administration (PWA)

    Public Works Administration (PWA)
    Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act on June 16, 1933, the Public Works Administration (PWA) budgeted several billion dollars to be spent on the construction of public works as a means of providing employment, stabilizing purchasing power, improving public welfare, and contributing to a revival of American
  • Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany

    Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
    On this day in 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or fÜhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany.The year 1932 had seen Hitler’s meteoric rise to prominence in Germany, spurred largely by the German people’s frustration with dismal economic conditions and the still-festering wounds inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harsh peace terms of the Versailles treaty.
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    Franklin D. Roosevelt

    January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945),commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.A Democrat,he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century.He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression,implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.s
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    New Deal Programs

    The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) is created, via the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, to provide work and cash relief for Americans struggling to get through the Great Depression. May 12, 1933: President Roosevelt signs into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
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    The Holocaust

    The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race.
  • Dust Bowl

    Dust Bowl
    The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions.
  • Social Security Administration (SSA)

    Social Security Administration (SSA)
    Social Security Act (1935) ... On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped.
  • Rape of Nanjing

    Rape of Nanjing
    The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre is also known as the Rape of Nanking or, using Pinyin romanization, the Nanjing Massacre or Rape of Nanjing.
  • Kristallnacht

    Kristallnacht
    Kristallnacht, literally, "Night of Crystal," is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.
  • Hitler invades Poland

    Hitler invades Poland
    One of Adolf Hitler's first major foreign policy initiatives after coming to power was to sign a nonaggression pact with Poland in January 1934. This move was not popular with many Germans who supported Hitler but resented the fact that Poland had received the former German provinces of West Prussia, Poznan, and Upper Silesia under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.
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    World War II

    World War II (often abbreviated to WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries.
  • German Blitzkrieg attacks

    German Blitzkrieg attacks
    Germany quickly overran much of Europe and was victorious for more than two years by relying on a new military tactic called the "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war). Blitzkrieg tactics required the concentration of offensive weapons (such as tanks, planes, and artillery) along a narrow front.
  • Pearl Harbor

    Pearl Harbor
    Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, and was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded
  • Tuskegee Airmen

    Tuskegee Airmen
    The Tuskegee Airmen /tʌsˈkiːɡiː/ is the popular name of a group of African-American military pilots (fighter and bomber) who fought in World War II. Officially, they formed the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Forces.
  • Navajo Code Talkers

    Navajo Code Talkers
    The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I.
  • Executive Order 9066

    Executive Order 9066
    Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942.
  • Bataan Death March

    Bataan Death March
    After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March.
  • Invasion of Normandy (D-Day)

    Invasion of Normandy (D-Day)
    During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. 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.
  • GI Bill

    GI Bill
    GI Bill definition. A law passed in 1944 that provided educational and other benefits for people who had served in the armed forces in World War II. Benefits are still available to persons honorably discharged from the armed forces.
  • Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima

    Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
    A Japanese city on which the United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare, on August 6, 1945. After the devastation of the bombing, Hiroshima was largely rebuilt. ... Followed by the bombing of Nagasaki, on August 9, this show of Allied strength hastened the surrender of Japan in World War II.
  • Victory over Japan/Pacific (VJ/VP) Day

    Victory over Japan/Pacific (VJ/VP) Day
    Victory over Japan Day (also known as V-J Day, Victory in the Pacific Day, or V-P Day) is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war. ... On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
  • Liberation of Concentration Camps

    Liberation of Concentration Camps
    Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners.
  • Victory in Europe (VE) Day

    Victory in Europe (VE) Day
    Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe.
  • United Nations (UN) Formed (1945)

    United Nations (UN) Formed (1945)
    A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II with the aim of preventing another such conflict. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193.
  • Germany divided

    Germany divided
    a republic in central Europe: after World War II divided into four zones, British, French, U.S., and Soviet, and in 1949 into East Germany and West Germany; East and West Germany were reunited in 1990. 137,852 sq. mi. (357,039 sq. km). Capital: Berlin.
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    Harry S. Truman

    Harry S. Truman was an American statesman who served as the 33rd President of the United States, taking the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. A World War I veteran, he assumed the presidency during the waning months of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War.He is known for implementing the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe.
  • Nuremberg Trials

    Nuremberg Trials
    The Nuremberg trials were a series of trials held between 1945 and 1949 in which the Allies prosecuted German military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and financiers for crimes they had committed during World War II.
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    baby boom

    a temporary marked increase in the birth rate, especially the one following World War II.
  • Mao Zedong Established Communist Rule in China

    Mao Zedong Established Communist Rule in China
    The last stage, lasting from September 1948 to December 1949, saw the communists take the initiative and the collapse of KMT rule in mainland China as a whole. On 1 October 1949, Mao declared the establishment of the PRC, which signified the end of the Chinese Revolution.
  • 22nd Amendment

    22nd Amendment
    Twenty-second Amendment. noun. 1. an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1951, limiting presidential terms to two for any one person, or to one elected term if the person has completed more than two years of another's term.
  • truman Doctrine

    truman Doctrine
    the principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, the doctrine was seen by the communists as an open declaration of the Cold War.
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    The Cold War (1947- 1991)

    a state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular.
  • Berlin airlift

    Berlin airlift
    Berlin airlift definition. A military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air after the government of East Germany, which at that time surrounded West Berlin ( see Berlin wall ), had cut off its supply routes.
  • Arab-Israeli War Begins

    Arab-Israeli War Begins
    : The first conflict between Arab states and the new State of Israel, the Arab-Israel War began as a civil conflict between Palestinian Jews and Arabs following the announcement of the United Nations (UN) plan of November 1947 to partition the country into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international enclave in ...
  • Marshall plan

    Marshall plan
    The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion (nearly $140 billion in 2017 dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II.
  • NATO formed

    NATO formed
    an organization formed in Washington, D.C. (1949), comprising the 12 nations of the Atlantic Pact together with Greece, Turkey, and the Federal Republic of Germany, for the purpose of collective defense against aggression. Origin of NATO.
  • Chinese forces cross Yalu and enter Korean War

    Chinese forces cross Yalu and enter Korean War
    in October 1950, Chinese troops under the name of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (CPV) crossed the Yalu River to assist North Korean armies, and ... Panikkar that China would intervene in the war if the American troops entered North Korea.
  • UN forces push North Korea to Yalu River- the border with China

    UN forces push North Korea to Yalu River- the border with China
    From west to east, the Yalu River, Paektu Mountain, and the Tumen River divide the two countries. Dandong, in the Liaoning Province of China, on the Yalu River delta, is the largest city on the border. On the other side of the river is the city of Sinuiju in North Pyongan Province, North Korea.
  • kim ll-sung invades south korea

    kim ll-sung invades south korea
    He became the first premier of the newly formed Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948, and in 1949 he became chairman of the Korean Workers' (communist) Party. Hoping to reunify Korea by force, Kim launched an invasion of South Korea in 1950, thereby igniting the Korean War.
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    1950s Prosperity

    The Decade of Prosperity. The economy overall grew by 37% during the 1950s. ... Inflation, which had wreaked havoc on the economy immediately after World War II, was minimal, in part because of Eisenhower's persistent efforts to balance the federal budget.
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    korean war

    Korean War definition. 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.
  • ethel and julius rosenberg execution

    ethel and julius rosenberg execution
    Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were United States citizens who were executed on June 19, 1953 after being convicted of committing espionage for the Soviet Union. ... They were also accused of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines to the USSR.
  • armistice signed

    armistice signed
    An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. ... The 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement is a major example of an armistice which has not been followed by a peace treaty.
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    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American Army general and statesman who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961
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    Warren Court

    The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until he retired in 1969.
  • Hernandez v. Texas

    Hernandez v. Texas
    Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954) was a landmark case, "the first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period."
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education
    Brown versus Board of Education (Brown decision) A case regarding school desegregation, decided by the Supreme Court in 1954. The Court ruled that segregation in public schools is prohibited by the Constitution.
  • Ho Chi Minh Established Communist Rule in Vietnam

    Ho Chi Minh Established Communist Rule in Vietnam
    Viet Minh, in full Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, English League for the Independence of Vietnam, organization that led the struggle for Vietnamese independence from French rule. ... During World War II the communist Viet Minh were the only effective Vietnamese force resisting the Japanese occupation of French Indochina.
  • warsaw pact formed

    warsaw pact formed
    Warsaw Pact definition. A military alliance of communist nations in eastern Europe. Organized in 1955 in answer to NATO, the Warsaw Pact included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.
  • polio vaccine

    polio vaccine
    Medical Definition of Polio vaccine, inactivated. Polio vaccine, inactivated: A vaccine that is made from a suspension of poliovirus types that are inactivated (killed) with formalin. Abbreviated IPV. IPV is given by injection.
  • Rose Parks Arrested

    Rose Parks Arrested
    Arrest report for Rosa Parks. On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This single act of nonviolent resistance sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, an eleven-month struggle to desegregate the city's buses.
  • Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Montgomery Bus Boycott
    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement.
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    Vietnam war

    The Vietnam War (1955–75) was a Cold War conflict pitting the U.S. and the remnants of the French colonial government in South Vietnam against the indigenous but communist Vietnamese independence movement, the Viet Minh, following the latter's expulsion of the French in 1954.
  • interstate highway act

    interstate highway act
    The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law.
  • Elvis Presley First Hit Song

    Elvis Presley First Hit Song
    Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. ... Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number one hit in the United States.
  • sputnik 1

    sputnik 1
    was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957.
  • Leave it to Beaver First Airs on TV

    Leave it to Beaver First Airs on TV
    Leave It to Beaver is a glimpse of middle-class American boyhood. ... Leave It to Beaver ran for six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes). The series had its debut on CBS on October 4, 1957.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1957

    Civil Rights Act of 1957
    The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pub.L. 85–315, 71 Stat. 634, enacted September 9, 1957, a federal voting rights bill, was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
  • Little Rock Nine

    Little Rock Nine
    The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas.
  • Chicano Mural Movement Begins

    Chicano Mural Movement Begins
    The Chicano mural movement began in the 1960s in Mexican-American barrios throughout the Southwest. Artists began using the walls of city buildings, housing projects, schools, and churches to depict Mexican-American culture.
  • Kennedy versus Nixon TV Debate

    Kennedy versus Nixon TV Debate
    In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debates in American history. The Kennedy-Nixon debates not only had a major impact on the election’s outcome, but ushered in a new era in which crafting a public image and taking advantage of media exposure became essential ingredients of a successful political campaign. They also heralded the central role television has continued to play in the democratic process.
  • peace crops formed

    peace crops formed
    On September 22, 1961, Kennedy signed congressional legislation creating a permanent Peace Corps that would “promote world peace and friendship” through three goals: (1) to help the peoples of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
  • Mapp v. Ohio

    Mapp v. Ohio
    Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), was a landmark case in criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," may not be used in state law criminal prosecutions in state courts, as ...
  • Affirmative Action

    Affirmative Action
    an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education; positive discrimination.
  • bay of pigs evasion

    bay of pigs evasion
    The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba.
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    john f. kennedy

    Kennedy, John F. ( JFK) A Democratic party political leader of the twentieth century; he was president from 1961 to 1963. His election began a period of great optimism in the United States.
  • cuban missile crisis

    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.
  • Sam Walton Opens First Walmart

    Sam Walton Opens First Walmart
    The history of Walmart, an American discount department store chain, began in 1950 when businessman Sam Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened Walton's 5 & 10.
  • Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas, Texas

    Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas, Texas
    Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. President Kennedy in the Rice Hotel, Houston, Texas.
  • Gideon v. wainwright

    Gideon v. wainwright
    The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is a fundamental right applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution's due process clause, and requires that indigent criminal defendants be provided counsel at trial. Supreme Court of Florida reversed.
  • George Wallace Blocks University of Alabama Entrance

    George Wallace Blocks University of Alabama Entrance
    Former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace vowed "segregation forever" and blocked the door to keep blacks from enrolling at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, in Tuscaloosa, Ala, while being confronted by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach.
  • The Feminine Mystique

    The Feminine Mystique
    The Feminine Mystique is a book written by Betty Friedan which is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. It was published on February 19, 1963 by W. W. Norton.
  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress.
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    Lyndon b. Johnson

    Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States; he was sworn into office following the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Upon taking office, Johnson launched an ambitious slate of progressive reforms aimed at creating a “Great Society” for all Americans.
  • The Great Society

    The Great Society
    a domestic program in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson that instituted federally sponsored social welfare programs.
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    Civil Rights Act of 1964
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
  • 24th Amendment

    24th Amendment
    The 24th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America abolished the poll tax for all federal elections. A poll tax was a tax of anywhere from one to a few dollars that had to be paid annually by each voter in order to be able to cast a vote.
  • Israeli-Palestine Conflict Begins

    Israeli-Palestine Conflict Begins
    The history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict began with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. This conflict came from the intercommunal violence in Mandatory Palestine between Israelis and Arabs from 1920 and erupted into full-scale hostilities in the 1947–48 civil war.
  • Escobedo v. Illinois

    Escobedo v. Illinois
    Danny Escobedo was arrested and taken to a police station for questioning. Over several hours, the police refused his repeated requests to see his lawyer. Escobedo's lawyer sought unsuccessfully to consult with his client. Escobedo subsequently confessed to murder.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Voting Rights Act of 1965
    A law passed at the time of the civil rights movement. It eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people
  • Malcolm X Assassinated

    Malcolm X Assassinated
    Malcolm X (1925–1965) was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence.
  • United Farm Worker's California Delano Grape Strike

    United Farm Worker's California Delano Grape Strike
    The Delano grape strike was a labor strike by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the United Farm Workers against grape growers in California. The strike began on September 8, 1965, and lasted more than five years. ... The strike rapidly spread to over more than 2,000 workers.
  • Miranda v. Arizona

    Miranda v. Arizona
    The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination requires law enforcement officials to advise a suspect interrogated in custody of his or her rights to remain silent and to obtain an attorney. Supreme Court of Arizona reversed and remanded.
  • Six Day War

    Six Day War
    The origins of the Six-Day War, which was fought between June 5 and June 10, 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt (known then as the United Arab Republic, UAR), Jordan, and Syria, include both longstanding and immediate issues.
  • Thurgood Marshall Appointed to Supreme Court

    Thurgood Marshall Appointed to Supreme Court
    In June 1967, President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court, and in late August he was confirmed. During his 24 years on the high court, Associate Justice Marshall consistently challenged discrimination based on race or sex, opposed the death penalty, and supported the rights of criminal defendants.
  • Tet Offensive

    Tet Offensive
    Tet offensive definition. A series of major attacks by communist forces in the Vietnam War. Early in 1968, Vietnamese communist troops seized and briefly held some major cities at the time of the lunar new year, or Tet.
  • My Lai Massacre

    My Lai Massacre
    A mass killing of helpless inhabitants of a village in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, carried out in 1968 by United States troops under the command of Lieutenant William Calley.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated

    Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
    Martin Luther King Jr., American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
  • Tinker v. Des Moines

    Tinker v. Des Moines
    Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools.
  • Vietnamization

    Vietnamization
    (in the Vietnam War) the US policy of withdrawing its troops and transferring the responsibility and direction of the war effort to the government of South Vietnam.
  • Woodstock Music Festival

    Woodstock Music Festival
    The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock— was a music festival in the United States in 1969 which attracted an audience of more than 400,000.
  • Draft Lottery

    Draft Lottery
    366 blue plastic capsules contained the birthdays that would be chosen in the first Vietnam draft lottery drawing on December 1, 1969. The first birth date drawn that night, assigned the lowest number, “001,” was September 14.
  • Manson Family Murders

    Manson Family Murders
    The Manson Family was a commune established in California in the late 1960s, led by Charles Manson. They gained national notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on August 9, 1969 by Tex Watson and three other members of the Family, acting under the instructions of Charles Manson.
  • Apollo 11

    Apollo 11
    The space vehicle that carried three American astronauts to the moon and back in July 1969. The vehicle consisted of a command module, which stayed in lunar orbit, and a lunar module, which carried two of the three crewmen to a safe landing on the moon.
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    Richard Nixon

    vice president under Eisenhower and 37th President of the United States; resigned after the Watergate scandal in 1974 (1913-1994) Synonyms: Nixon, President Nixon, Richard M.
  • Environmental Protection Agency

    Environmental Protection Agency
    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in December 1970 under United States President Richard Nixon. The EPA is an agency of the United States federal government whose mission is to protect human and environmental health.
  • Invasion of Cambodia

    Invasion of Cambodia
    The Cambodian Campaign was a series of military operations conducted in eastern Cambodia during 1970 by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam as an extension of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War.
  • Kent State Shootings

    Kent State Shootings
    A controversial incident in 1970, in which unarmed students demonstrating against United States involvement in the Vietnam War were fired on by panicky troops of the National Guard. Four students were killed and nine wounded. The shooting occurred at Kent State University in Ohio.
  • Pentagon Papers

    Pentagon Papers
    A classified study of the Vietnam War that was carried out by the Department of Defense. An official of the department, Daniel Ellsberg, gave copies of the study in 1971 to the New York Times and Washington Post.
  • 26th Amendment

    26th Amendment
    The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
  • Policy of Detente Begins

    Policy of Detente Begins
    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, Leonid I. Brezhnev, ...
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    Jimmy Carter

    James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. ... Carter has remained active in public life during his post-presidency, and in 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in co-founding the Carter Center.
  • Watergate Scandal

    Watergate Scandal
    An incident in the presidency of Richard Nixon that led to his resignation. In June 1972, burglars in the pay of Nixon's campaign committee broke into offices of the Democratic party.
  • Title lX

    Title lX
    No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. (Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
  • Nixon Visits China

    Nixon Visits China
    U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China (officially the People's Republic of China or PRC) was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and China.
  • Roe v. Wade

    Roe v. Wade
    he Supreme Court case that held that the Constitution protected a woman's right to an abortion prior to the viability of the fetus.
  • Engaged Species Act

    Engaged Species Act
    The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 is a key legislation for both domestic and international conservation. The act aims to provide a framework to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species and their habitats.
  • First Cell-Phones

    First Cell-Phones
    On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival.
  • OPEC Oil Embargo

    OPEC Oil Embargo
    On October 17, 1973, Arab oil producers declared an embargo that drastically limited the shipment of oil to the United States. These producers, members of a cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), enforced the embargo in response to the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel.
  • War Powers Resolution

    War Powers Resolution
    The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. 1541–1548) is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.
  • Ford Pardon Nixon

    Ford Pardon Nixon
    A presidential pardon of Richard Nixon (Proclamation 4311) was issued on September 8, 1974, by President Gerald Ford, which granted his predecessor Richard Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he might have committed against the United States while president.
  • United States v. Nixon

    United States v. Nixon
    United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case which resulted in a unanimous decision against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to a federal district court.
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    Gerald Ford

    A political leader of the twentieth century who served as president from 1974 to 1977. A prominent Republican in Congress, Ford was named vice president in 1973, after the resignation of Spiro Agnew. He succeeded to the presidency in 1974, when President Richard Nixon was forced to resign.
  • Fall of Saigon

    Fall of Saigon
    The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975.
  • Bill Gates Starts Microsoft

    Bill Gates Starts Microsoft
    Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation. Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ... In 1985, IBM requested Microsoft to develop a new operating system for their computers called OS/2.
  • National Rifle Associate (NRA) Lobbying Begins

    National Rifle Associate (NRA) Lobbying Begins
    as a subsidiary to the NRA, to support NRA-friendly policians. Chris W. Cox, who is the NRA's chief lobbyist and principal political strategist, is also the NRA-PVF chairman. Through the NRA-PVF, the NRA began to rate political candidates on their positions on gun rights.
  • Steve Jobs Starts Apple

    Steve Jobs Starts Apple
    Steve Jobs. In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer and showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer (now called Apple Inc.) in the garage of Jobs's Los Altos home on Crist Drive.
  • Community Reinvestment Act of 1977

    Community Reinvestment Act of 1977
    CRA' An act of Congress enacted in 1977 with the intention of encouraging depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of surrounding communities (particularly low and moderate income neighborhoods).
  • Camp David Accords

    Camp David Accords
    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. Examples from the Web for Camp David Accords.
  • Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty

    Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
    False peace will not last". On the other hand, the treaty led both Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to share the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace between the two states.
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    Iran Hostage Crisis

    Iran hostage crisis, in U.S. history, events following the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran by Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979. The overthrow of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran by an Islamic revolutionary government earlier in the year had led to a steady deterioration in Iran-U.S. relations.
  • Conservative Resurgence

    Conservative Resurgence
    Its initiators called it the Conservative Resurgence while its detractors labeled it the Fundamentalist Takeover. It was launched with the charge that the seminaries and denominational agencies were dominated by liberals.
  • "Trickle Down Economics"

    "Trickle Down Economics"
    Trickle-down economics, or “trickle-down theory,” argues for income and capital gains tax breaks or other financial benefits to large businesses, investors and entrepreneurs in order to stimulate economic growth.
  • War on Drugs

    War on Drugs
    War on Drugs is an American term usually applied to the U.S. federal government's campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade.
  • AIDS Epidemic

    AIDS Epidemic
    Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is the name of the fatal clinical condition that results from infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which progressively damages the body's ability to protect itself from disease organisms.
  • Sandra Day O'Connor Appointed to U.S. Supreme Court

    Sandra Day O'Connor Appointed to U.S. Supreme Court
    Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan to 2006. She was the first woman to serve on the Court. ... Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the Senate.
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    Ronald Reagan

    Ronald Wilson Reagan (/ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
  • Marines in Lebanon

    Marines in Lebanon
    The 1958 Lebanon crisis was a Lebanese political crisis caused by political and religious tensions in the country that included a U.S. military intervention. The intervention lasted around three months until President Camille Chamoun, who had requested the assistance, completed his term as president of Lebanon.
  • Iran-Contra Affair

    Iran-Contra Affair
    The Iran–Contra affair also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.
  • The Oprah Winfrey Show First Airs

    The Oprah Winfrey Show First Airs
    The Oprah Winfrey Show, often referred to simply as Oprah, is an American syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986 to May 25, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. ... The show has been highly influential, and many of its topics have penetrated into the American pop-cultural consciousness.
  • "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!"

    "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!"
    "Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961.
  • End of Cold War

    End of Cold War
    The End of the Cold War. ... The end of the Cold War. When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the reins of power in the Soviet Union in 1985, no one predicted the revolution he would bring. A dedicated reformer, Gorbachev introduced the policies of glasnost and perestroika to the USSR.
  • Berlin Wall Falls

    Berlin Wall Falls
    On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. ... East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”).
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    George H. W. Bush

    George H. W. ... George Herbert Walker Bush (born June 12, 1924) is an American politician. He was the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993.
  • Germany Reunification

    Germany Reunification
    German reunification (German: Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) is a term of history. Unification means making two or more parts as one. The German reunification is the unification of the two parts of Germany. After the Second World War, Germany had been divided into two countries.
  • Iraq Invades Kuwait

    Iraq Invades Kuwait
    The Invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 was a 2-day operation conducted by Iraq against the neighboring state of Kuwait, which resulted in the seven-month-long Iraqi occupation of the country. ... The State of Kuwait was annexed, and Saddam Hussein announced a few days later that it was the 19th province of Iraq.
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    Persian Gulf War

    A war between the forces of the United Nations, led by the United States, and those of Iraq that followed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein 's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
  • Soviet Union Collapses

    Soviet Union Collapses
    collapse of communism definition. A stunning series of events between 1989 and 1991 that led to the fall of communist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
  • Operation Desert Storm

    Operation Desert Storm
    Operation Desert Storm. BrE. the name used for the military operation in which international armed forces, including British and US troops, attacked Iraq in the Gulf War. It began on 16 January 1991 and lasted 100 days.
  • Ms. Adcox Born

    Ms. Adcox Born
    The year Ms. Adcox was born.
  • Rodney King

    Rodney King
    Rodney Glen King was an African-American taxi driver who became known internationally as the victim of Los Angeles Police Department brutality, after a videotape was released of several police officers beating him during his arrest on March 3, 1991.
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    Bill Clinton

    William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992.
  • NAFTA Founded

    NAFTA Founded
    The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States and entered into force on 1 January 1994 in order to establish a trilateral trade bloc in North America.
  • Contract with America

    Contract with America
    The 1994 elections resulted in Republicans gaining 54 House and 9 U.S. Senate seats. When the Republicans gained this majority of seats in the 104th Congress, the Contract was seen as a triumph by party leaders such as Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and the American conservative movement in general.
  • O.J. Simpson's "Trial of the Century"

    O.J. Simpson's "Trial of the Century"
    The O. J. Simpson murder case (officially titled People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson) was a criminal trial held at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in which former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster, and actor Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson was tried on two counts of murder for the June 12, 1994, deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Mezzaluna restaurant waiter Ronald Goldman.
  • Bill Clinton's Impeachment

    Bill Clinton's Impeachment
    The impeachment process of Bill Clinton was initiated by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, against Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice
  • USA Patriot Act

    USA Patriot Act
    The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. With its ten-letter abbreviation (USA PATRIOT) expanded, the full title is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001”.
  • War on Terror

    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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    George W. Bush

    George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was also the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut.
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    War in Afghanistan

    Afghanistan War, international conflict in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 that was triggered by the September 11 attacks and consisted of three phases. The first phase—toppling the Taliban (the ultraconservative political and religious faction that ruled Afghanistan and provided sanctuary for al-Qaeda,
  • 9/11

    9/11
    September 11, 2001: the day on which Islamic terrorists, believed to be part of the Al-Qaeda network, hijacked four commercial airplanes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City and a third one into the Pentagon in Virginia: the fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.
  • Jayda's Birthday

    Jayda's Birthday
    The day Jayda was born
  • NASA Mars Rover Mission Begins

    NASA Mars Rover Mission Begins
    NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They landed on Mars January 3 and January 24 PST, 2004 (January 4 and January 25 UTC, 2004)
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    Iraq War

    The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. ... Iraqi forces were quickly overwhelmed as U.S. forces swept through the country.
  • Facebook Launched

    Facebook Launched
    The Facebook website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen.
  • Hurricane Katrina

    Hurricane Katrina
    Image result for hurricane katrina definition
    Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the United States. An estimated 1,833 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed in late August 2005, and millions of others were left homeless along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans.
  • Saddam Hussein Executed

    Saddam Hussein Executed
    The execution of Saddam Hussein took place on Saturday, 30 December 2006. Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging, after being convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982, in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him.
  • Iphone Released

    Iphone Released
    iPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. They run Apple's iOS mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, and there have been multiple new hardware iterations with new iOS releases since.
  • American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

    American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
    The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on February 17, 2009.
  • Hilary Clinton Appointed U.S. Secretary of State

    Hilary Clinton Appointed U.S. Secretary of State
    Hillary Clinton served as the 67th United States Secretary of State, under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2013, overseeing the department that conducted the Foreign policy of Barack Obama. She was preceded in office by Condoleezza Rice, and succeeded by John Kerry.
  • Sonia Sotomayor Appointed to U.S. Supreme Court

    Sonia Sotomayor Appointed to U.S. Supreme Court
    In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. ... In May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice David Souter. Her nomination was confirmed by the Senate in August 2009 by a vote of 68–31.
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    Barack Obama

    US Democratic statesman, 44th president of the US 2009–17; full name Barack Hussein Obama. He was the first African American to be elected to the presidency, and was re-elected in 2012 for a second term. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
  • Arab Spring

    Arab Spring
    a series of antigovernment uprisings affecting Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East beginning in 2010.
  • Osama Bin Laden Killed

    Osama Bin Laden Killed
    Usama ibn Mohammed ibn Awad ibn Ladin, often anglicized as Osama bin Laden March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011),was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States and many other mass-casualty attacks worldwide.He was a Saudi Arabian until 1994 (stateless thereafter), a member of the wealthy bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.
  • Space X Falcon 9

    Space X Falcon 9
    Space Exploration Technologies Corp doing business as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars.SpaceX. SpaceX's achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit
  • Donald Trump Elected President

    Donald Trump Elected President
    Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States, in office since January 20, 2017. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality. ... Trump entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and defeated sixteen opponents in the primaries.