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Aug 3, 1492
The Discovery of America by Columbus
Christopher Columbus Discovers America, 1492. Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos on August 3, 1492. His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia (the Indies) where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. -
The Settlement of Jamestown
Jamestown is a historic site in east Virginia. Historic Jamestowne is home to the ruins of the first permanent English settlement in North America. It includes the remains of 18th-century Ambler Mansion. Artifacts from the region’s settlers are on display in the Archaearium archaeology museum. Nearby, the Jamestown Settlement is a living-history museum with recreations of a 1610s fort and a Powhatan Indian village. -
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The French and Indian War
The French and Indian War comprised the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War of 1756–63. It pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773 -
The Battle of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. -
The Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776. -
The Battle of Yorktown
The Siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the Surrender at Yorktown, German Battle or the Siege of Little York, ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, was a decisive -
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The Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in the old Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. -
The invention of the cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. -
The Alien and Sedition Acts
A series of laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the Federalist Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. -
The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. -
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The War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom, and their respective allies from June 1812 to February 1815. -
The Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was the legislation that provided for the admission to the United States of Maine as a free state along with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power -
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Andrew Jackson’s Election
The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. -
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The Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. -
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The Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced relocations of Native American peoples from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States, to areas to the west that had been designated as Indian Territory. -
The invention of the telegraph
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. -
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The Mexican-American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War in the United States and in Mexico as the American intervention in Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on -
Theodore Roosevelt becomes president
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman and writer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. -
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The Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War. -
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. -
The Organization of Standard Oil Trust
The Standard Oil Trust was formed in 1863 by John D. Rockefeller. He built up the company through 1868 to become the largest oil refinery firm in the world. In 1870, the company was renamed Standard Oil Company, after which Rockefeller decided to buy up all the other competition and form them into one large company. -
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Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
The Appomattox Campaign was a series of American Civil War battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865 in Virginia that concluded with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern -
Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. -
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13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
The 13th (1865), 14th (1868), and 15th Amendments (1870) were the first amendments made to the U.S. constitution in 60 years. Known collectively as the Civil War Amendments, they were designed to ensure the equality for recently emancipated slaves. -
Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment
On February 24, 1868 three days after Johnson's dismissal of Stanton, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 (with 17 members not voting) in favor of a resolution to impeach the President for high crimes and misdemeanors. ... One week later, the House adopted eleven articles of impeachment against the President. -
The invention of the electric light, telephone, and airplane
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The Pullman and Homestead Strikes
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. -
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The 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 US intervention in the Cuban War of Independence.