American folk painter Malcah Zeldis (b. 1931) recovered from cancer in 1986, the same year the Statue of Liberty marked its centennial in New York Harbor. Zeldis’s painting Miss Liberty Celebration (1987) commemorates both Zeldis’s own survival and the endurance of American life, liberty, and freedom.
3/5/1770
British soldiers kill five colonists in what becomes known as the Boston Massacre. Among the dead is Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed African and Native American ancestry, considered the first casualty of the American Revolution.
Print copy from Paul Revere’s engraved printing plate of the Boston Massacre
Winter 1773–74
Estimated total population in 1776: 2,500,000
Total US Revolutionary servicemen: Between 184,000 to 250,000
Black American Revolutionary soldiers and sailors: 5,000 to 8,000
In response to the destruction of the East India Company’s tea, the British Parliament passes four punitive measures known as the Intolerable Acts.
8/6/1774
The first American Shaker religious communities are established in New York City by Mother Ann Lee and her followers.
9/5/1774
The First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia to respond to the Intolerable Acts. Delegates establish a sweeping boycott of British goods and send a letter of grievances to King George III.
Fall 1775
The 1775–82 North American smallpox epidemic begins with an outbreak in Boston. By its end, more than 130,000 people die from the disease.
1/10/1776
Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, a widely circulated pamphlet arguing against the British monarchy and aristocracy and for separation from Britain.
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, 1776
12/26/1776
10/28/1774
Late 1770
Astronomer David Rittenhouse builds the Rittenhouse Orrery, a precise mechanical model of the solar system.
9/1/1773
Enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley’s book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, is published in London.
12/16/1773
Revolutionary soldiers who died in battle: 4,435
People camped at Valley Forge: 12,000 soldiers and 400 women and children
Members of the Sons of Liberty, some disguised as Native Americans, board three merchant ships and dump 45 tons of tea into Boston Harbor to protest parliamentary taxes, an act later known as the Boston Tea Party.
8c US postage stamp commemorating the Boston Tea Party, 1973
4/18–4/19/1775
Newport Light Infantry miter cap, 1774
George Washington’s army is victorious at the Battle of Trenton after crossing the Delaware River and surprising a British garrison in Trenton, NJ.
7/8/1777
Vermont becomes the first territory to abolish adult slavery, adopting laws to free enslaved men at age 21 and enslaved women at age 18. It also provides voting rights to Black males.
10/7/17 77
Gen. Horatio Gates’s decisive victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga persuades France to ally with the Americans.
British cannon barrel marked “Surrendered by the Convention of Saratoga”
The Rhode Island General Assembly authorizes the formation of the Newport Light Infantry, a 100-person voluntary group created to improve military training and readiness.
3/31/1776
5/10/1775
Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John Adams, asking him to “remember the ladies” in the laws about women’s rights within marriage.
7/4/1776
The first battles of the Revolutionary War take place at Lexington and Concord, MA, where a volley of shots at Concord’s North Bridge comes to be known as the “shot heard round the world.”
The Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. It establishes a Continental army and appoints
National Organization for Women event poster with quote by Abigail Adams, 1976
The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, officially declaring separation from Great Britain. The 13 original colonies become states.
George Washington its commander in chief.
6/17/1775
The British defeat Patriot forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill, gaining ground but sustaining heavy losses: 1,054 British soldiers die compared with 450 Americans.
7/12/1775
The Continental Congress establishes a Committee on Indian Affairs to seek peace treaties with Native American tribes.
Winter 1777–78
The Continental army spends the winter at Valley Forge near occupied Philadelphia. Influenza, typhoid, and other diseases spread throughout the camp, killing 2,000.
2/6/1778
The US and France sign the Treaty of the Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The agreements provide financial aid and military support for the American colonies.
6/28/1778
Washington’s army defeats the army of Sir Henry Clinton at the Battle of Monmouth, forcing a British retreat.
2/11–5/12/1780
British forces besiege and capture Charleston, SC.
5/4/1780
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is established as a center for knowledge and inquiry for the new nation.
9/23/1780
US officials uncover the treason of Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold, then commander at West Point. He had been collaborating with the British,
3/8/1782
The Gnadenhutten Massacre takes place in what is now Gnadenhutten, OH, when Pennsylvania militiamen kill some 90 pacifist Lenape people in mistaken retaliation for the deaths of settlers.
3/15/1783
Estimated total population: 2,780,369
Number of states in the federal union by the end of the decade: 12
Average amount of American tobacco imported by Great Britain per year: 21,300 tons
passing details of troop movements and army sizes and plotting the surrender of West Point.
3/1/1781
The states ratify the Articles of Confederation, forming a weak central government. The Continental Congress becomes known as the Congress of the Confederation.
5/26/1781
The Bank of North America, the first national bank, is chartered by the Congress of the Confederation.
April 1783
The Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that slavery is incompatible with the state constitution, a decision prompted by the Quock Walker case.
Officers of the Continental army in Newburgh, NY, threaten to mutiny over back pay and pensions. George Washington addresses the group in a speech known as the Newburgh Address, peacefully dissolving the tension.
10/22/1784
Haudenosaunee representatives sign the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, ceding land in what is today Pennsylvania and New York. Shawnee tribal leaders dispute the cessions.
12/24/1784
The Methodist Episcopal Church, the first religious denomination to organize itself nationally in the US, is founded.
1785
The Northwest Indian War begins after a coalition of tribes organizes to reclaim hunting grounds and resist
10/19/1781
At the Battle of Yorktown, British General Cornwallis surrenders to the combined forces of Washington and French commander Comte de Rochambeau.
Regimental flag surrendered by German troops at the Battle of Yorktown
Receipt for payment issued to a Continental army soldier
American settlement in the Northwest Territory, in the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
1/16/1786
Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is passed by the Virginia Senate, establishing separation of church and state in Virginia.
1/25/1787
Shays’s Rebellion, led by former Continental army captain Daniel Shays in reaction to a debt crisis affecting poor farmers and still-unpaid Revolutionary
8/22/1787
John Fitch successfully demonstrates his steamboat on the Delaware River. He goes on to operate the first steamboat service in the US.
10/27/1787
The first of The Federalist Papers is published. Written by Alexander Hamilton, it argues for the ratification of the US Constitution.
Number of banks in the United States by 1789: three, the Bank of North America, Bank of New York, and Bank of Massachusetts
Commemorative Revolutionary War victory medal, 1782
9/3/1783
The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the Revolutionary War.
War veterans, climaxes in a failed attack on the federal arsenal at Springfield, MA.
6/4/1787
John Poor founds the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia, the first statechartered US institution for women’s higher education.
7/13/1787
Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which provides a framework for creating states and
6/3/1784
The US Army is officially established, a continuation of the Continental army.
abolishing slavery in the Northwest Territory.
12/7/1787
Delaware is the first state to ratify the Constitution. As other states vote to ratify, they are added to the union.
6/21/1788
The US Constitution is ratified by New Hampshire, the 9th of the 13 original states, and takes effect.
4/30/1789
George Washington is inaugurated as the nation's first president after a unanimous vote by electors from all 10 eligible states.
Spring 1790
Judith Sargent Murray publishes “On the Equality of the Sexes,” an essay that argues men and women are intellectual equals.
5/29/1790
Rhode Island is the last of the 13 original states to ratify the Constitution.
7/16/1790
Washington, DC, is chosen as the site for the nation’s new capital.
Total population: 3,929,214
Number of states by the end of the decade: 16
Most populous state: Virginia, with 747,610 total residents (including
292,627 enslaved persons)
8/2/1790
The US conducts its first census and lists the population at the time as 3,929,214 inhabitants.
Jug celebrating the first US census, made in England in 1790 for the US market
3/4/1791
Vermont becomes the 14th state.
9/11/1791
Western Pennsylvania farmers and distillers launch the Whiskey Rebellion to oppose a federal tax on distilled spirits, the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the federal government.
11/4/1791
The Northwest Indian Coalition defeats the US Army at the Battle of Wabash.
1798
12/15/1791
The Bill of Rights, 10 constitutional amendments guaranteeing personal freedoms and rights, is ratified by a three-fourths majority of states.
6/1/1792 Kentucky becomes the 15th state.
5/1/1794
Least populous state: Delaware, with 59,094 total residents (including 8,887 enslaved persons)
Gallons of spirits produced by George Washington’s Mount Vernon distillery in 1799: 11,000
February 1791
Benjamin Banneker, a free Black astronomer, mathematician, and abolitionist, begins work as assistant surveyor for the nation’s capital.
15c US postage stamp depicting Benjamin Banneker, 1980
The Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers, one of the first organized labor unions in the US, forms in Philadelphia, PA.
8/20/1794
US Army troops defeat the Northwest Indian Coalition at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, ending the Northwest Indian War.
Medal commemorating the Treaty of Greenville, signed after the Battle of Fallen Timbers
Charles Brockden Brown publishes Wieland, the first American gothic novel.
7/7/1798
The Quasi-War, a series of naval engagements between the US and France, begins after tensions escalate between the two countries over strained trade and diplomatic relations.
Pitcher depicting a US militiaman defending the coast against French ships, ca. 1804
2/12/1793
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 passes, permitting slaveowners to recapture runaway slaves in free states and imposing a fine for helping escapees.
July 1793
The American Industrial Revolution begins with the opening of Slater Mill in Rhode Island, the first water-powered textile mill in the US.
3/14/1794
Eli Whitney patents his cotton gin, which mechanically cuts cotton fibers from their seeds quickly and efficiently, increasing productivity.
2/7/1795
The 11th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, protecting states from lawsuits brought by the citizens of other states or foreign nations.
6/1/1796
Tennessee becomes the 16th state.
3/4/1797
John Adams becomes the second president.
June–July 1798
Fearing a major war with France, Congress passes the Alien and Sedition Acts, four laws that curtail immigrants’ rights and restrict the press.
1799
Seneca religious leader Handsome Lake begins preaching Gai’wiio (meaning “Good Message”), also known as the Longhouse Religion, which combines elements of traditional Haudenosaunee and Quaker beliefs.
Total population: 5,308,483
Percent increase of population from 1790 to 1800: 35.1%
Percentage of the workforce in agriculture: around 74%
4/24/1800
The Library of Congress is founded to serve as a reference library for federal lawmakers.
8/30/1800
One thousand enslaved people plan to gather near Richmond, VA, to demand freedom in an event known as Gabriel’s Rebellion. First a massive storm delays the full assembly, then the state militia moves in, halting the gathering.
Population per square mile of land area: 6.1
Amount the United States pays for the Louisiana Territory: about $0.04 per acre, or $18.00 per square mile
11/17/1800
Congress meets for the first time in Washington, DC.
3/4/1801
Thomas Jefferson becomes the third president.
Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Jefferson (1805/1821)
5/14/1801
The First Barbary War begins between the US and Tripoli (modern-day northern Libya) after the US refuses to pay tribute in exchange for safe passage for its ships in the Mediterranean.
2/19/1803
Ohio becomes the 17th state.
37c US postage stamp commemorating the Ohio statehood bicentennial
5/14/1804
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out to explore the Louisiana Territory. In November, they engage Sacagawea (Lemhi Shoshone) as an interpreter and guide.
Early study sketch for the Sacagawea dollar coin, 1998
6/15/1804
2/24/1803
In its Marbury v. Madison ruling, the US Supreme Court establishes judicial review, the right of the courts to determine the constitutionality of the actions of the executive and legislative branches of the government.
4/30/1803
Thomas Jefferson authorizes the signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, which acquires 828,000 square miles of the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River from France for $15 million.
Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall (1808)
The 12th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. A key provision of the new amendment requires separate ballots for president and vice president, rather than awarding the vice presidency to the second-highest vote getter.
6/22/1807
The British warship HMS Leopard opens fire on a US warship off the coast of Virginia, killing three of the crew and causing American public outrage. Jefferson retaliates by closing US ports to British ships.
8/17/1807
Robert Fulton’s Clermont, the first commercially successful steamboat, makes its maiden trip up the Hudson from New York City to Albany.
12/22/1807
Congress passes the Embargo Act of 1807, which halts all trade with foreign nations, thereby pressuring the British and French to respect US neutrality during the Napoleonic Wars.
7/11/1804
Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr, longtime political rivals, have a duel in Weehawken, NJ, culminating in the death of Hamilton.
1/1/1808
The Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves takes effect as federal law, imposing heavy penalties on the importation of slaves. It does not affect the domestic slave trade.
American playwright, historian, and champion of women’s rights Mercy Otis Warren publishes History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution.
7/23/1805
Chickasaw representatives sign the Treaty of the Chickasaw Nation, ceding 2.25 million acres to the US government in exchange for the government paying off $20,000 in Chickasaw debts to trading companies.
6/16/1806
Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa correctly predicts a solar eclipse, further strengthening his religious movement.
3/4/1809
James Madison becomes the fourth president.
5/5/1809
Mary Dixon Kies becomes the first woman to receive a US patent in her own name, for a straw-weaving process used in hat making.
9/30/1809
The Treaty of Fort Wayne, ceding approximately 3 million acres of land, is signed by Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, and Eel River tribal leaders. Shawnee Chief Tecumseh refuses to sign, and his coalition begins attacking white settlements.
3/16/1810
In Fletcher v. Peck, a dispute over Georgia’s repeal of a land sale act, the US Supreme Court rules a state law unconstitutional for the first time.
1/8/1811
Charles Deslondes leads around 500 enslaved and free Black people in a march toward freedom in the Territory of Orleans, one of the largest slave revolts in US history.
6/18/1812
Total population: 7,239,881
Population per square mile of land area: 4.3
Number of cigar makers in the US: 411
Pure cotton goods (in yards) produced by households vs. manufactories: 16,581,299 vs. 146,974
Frequently exported American goods in 1810: books, cheese, gunpowder, marble slabs, whale oil, and Windsor chairs
After years of hostilities over British impressment of American sailors and obstruction of trade, the US declares war on Great Britain, beginning the War of 1812.
7/25/1812
The North African Regency of Algiers, in league with the British, declares war on the US over tribute payments. This leads to the Second Barbary War three years later.
1/8/1815
11/7/1811
At the Battle of Tippecanoe, Gov. William Henry Harrison defeats the forces of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, led by his brother Tenskwatawa.
Tenskwatawa, published in History of the Indian Tribes of North America , 1838
4c US postage stamp commemorating the Louisiana statehood sesquicentennial
4/30/1812
Louisiana becomes the 18th state.
The first water-powered textile mill combining all steps for processing raw cotton into woven cloth is constructed in Waltham, MA.
3/27/1814
The Creek War, a conflict between the Red Stick Creek and the US over land ownership, ends with a defeat of the Creek forces at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
Flag made in 1813 and carried by US forces during the Creek War
4/9/1816
3/4/1817
8/24/1814
British forces invade Washington, DC, and set fire to the White House, Capitol, and many other federal buildings.
9/14/1814
Francis Scott Key writes “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” a poem that will become the official national anthem in 1931 under the title “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Outnumbered US forces under the command of Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans against the British, the greatest US land victory of the War of 1812.
Uniform coat worn by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans
2/17/1815
The African Methodist Episcopal Church forms under the leadership of Richard Allen, a formerly enslaved preacher, community organizer, and Underground Railroad station master, uniting five African American congregations in the mid-Atlantic region under one church organization.
12/11/1816
11/21/1817
Great Britain and the US exchange signed copies of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
The First Seminole War begins when Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson invades Spanish Florida and attacks the Seminole in retaliation for the tribe razing US settlements and sheltering escaped enslaved people.
12/10/1817
Mississippi becomes the 20th state.
5c US postage stamp commemorating the Mississippi statehood sesquicentennial
12/3/1818
Illinois becomes the 21st state.
January 1819
Due to extreme land speculation, lax federal regulation on paper currency, and other factors, a financial crisis known as the Panic of 1819 begins, causing an abrupt, severe recession that lasts for five years.
Indiana becomes the 19th state.
2/22/1819
Under the Adams-Onís Treaty, signed by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Don Luis de Onís, Spanish minister to the US, Spain gives up its claims to Florida.
3/6/1819
In McCulloch v. Maryland, the US Supreme Court rules that states cannot tax the federal government.
12/14/1819
Alabama becomes the 22nd state.
Total population: 9,638,453
Number of states by the end of the decade: 24
Free African Americans: 233,398
Total number of men employed (including enslaved men): 2,490,770
American Society of Temperance membership in 1829: around 100,000
8/10/1821
3/3/1820
3/15/1820
Maine and Missouri to
Maine becomes the 23rd state. 1821
After 12 years of work, Sequoyah finishes his syllabary, a written form of the Cherokee language, with his daughter Ayokeh’s help.
Sequoyah, published in History of the Indian Tribes of North America , 1838
Congress passes the Missouri Compromise, agreeing to admit Maine and Missouri to the union to maintain the balance between free and slave states. It also bans slavery north of the 36°30 ′ parallel, except in Missouri.
Pipe with portrait of Henry Clay, architect of the Missouri Compromise of 1820
6c US postage stamp commemorating the Maine statehood sesquicentennial
Missouri becomes the 24th state. September 1821 Emma Hart Willard founds Troy Female Seminary in Troy, NY, an institution providing American women with a college-comparable education.
US postage stamp commemorating the Missouri statehood sesquicentennial
12/2/1823
The Monroe Doctrine warns European powers not to interfere in the affairs of countries in the Western Hemisphere.
3/11/1824
Secretary of War John C. Calhoun establishes the Bureau of Indian Affairs to manage relations between the government and Indigenous nations.
3/4/1825
John Quincy Adams becomes the sixth president.
4/25/1822
The American Colonization Society— believing racial integration to be impossible—helps establish Liberia as a colony in Africa for free Black people.
Liberian one-cent token referencing the American Colonization Society, 1833
3/16/1827
John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish launch Freedom’s Journal, the first African American–owned and operated newspaper, in New York City.
1827–1838
John James Audubon publishes The Birds of America , a series of 435 life-size watercolor illustrations of North American birds printed between 1827 and 1838.
2/21/1828
The first edition of the Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper in both
10/26/1825
6/22/1822
Denmark Vesey, a formerly enslaved carpenter, is captured along with other conspirators and later hanged for planning a slave rebellion in Charleston, SC.
3/10/1823
In Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh the US Supreme Court rules that Native Americans have a right to occupy land within areas claimed by Europeans during colonization but hold no title to it, forcing them to sell only to the federal government.
The 363-mile Erie Canal opens for shipping between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, allowing manufacturing to spread to the Midwest and making the state of New York the center of trade.
2/4/1826
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, an early participant in the American Romanticism literary movement, is published.
English and Cherokee, is published in New Echota, Cherokee Nation.
4/14/1828
Noah Webster publishes his American Dictionary of the English Language, identifying the increasing differences between American and British English.
7/4/1828
Work begins on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first steam-operated railway in the US.
2/13/1826
The American Temperance Society, promoting abstinence from alcohol, is founded in Boston, reflecting the religious enthusiasm and reform sentiments of the Second Great Awakening.
Temperance Society membership certificate, 1841
3/4/1829
Andrew Jackson becomes the seventh president.
9/28/1829
David Walker publishes Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, calling for the immediate abolition of slavery and rejecting the idea of sending enslaved people back to Africa.
5/28/1830
President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, calling for the relocation of thousands of Native Americans in what has become known as the Trail of Tears.
3/2/1833
In response to the Ordinance of Nullification, President Jackson signs the Force Bill, which allows the use of military force to collect tariff duties and establishes federal sovereignty over states.
12/3/1833
The Oberlin Collegiate Institute is founded in Oberlin, OH, as the first coeducational college and the first college to admit students regardless of race in the US.
Alumna Dr. Matilda A. Evans at Oberlin College, 1896
6/21/1834
Inventor and industrialist Cyrus McCormick patents his mechanical reaper for harvesting grain.
12/28/1835
The Second Seminole War breaks out after the US government fails to relocate Florida Seminoles west of the Mississippi.
US Army canteen likely used during the Seminole Wars
1/26/1837
Total population: 12,860,702
Total number of people identified as white: 10,530,044 (81.9%)
Percent increase of population from 1820 to 1830: 33.5%
Indigenous people displaced under the Indian Removal Act of 1830: 50,000–100,000, primarily Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole
Number of newspapers in circulation in the United States: 1,000–1,200
1831
The Choctaw are the first Indigenous group relocated from their homeland by the Indian Removal Act. Between 1831 and 1833, around 15,000 Choctaw walk the Trail of Tears. A quarter of them die.
1/1/1831
William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent abolitionist, launches The Liberator, an influential antislavery newspaper.
8/21–23/1831
Enslaved preacher Nat Turner organizes a slave rebellion in Southampton County, VA. At least 55 Virginians are killed.
3/3/1832
In Worcester v. Georgia , the US Supreme Court rules that Native American nations are not subject to state laws.
11/24/1832
South Carolina adopts the Ordinance of Nullification, voiding federal tariffs and triggering the Nullification Crisis, a conflict that challenges the power of the federal government.
12/4/1833
Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, William Lloyd Garrison, and others found the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, soon the most prominent abolitionist organization in the country.
4/28/1834
Between 20 and 60 people, known as the Wyeth-Lee Party, set out on the Oregon Trail, the first settler group to travel the full route. They arrive in the Willamette Valley in the fall of 1834.
3/6/1836
Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops defeat Texian and Tejano defenders at the Alamo Mission in what becomes known as the Battle of Alamo. The defeat rallies forces in the newly declared Republic of Texas.
6/15/1836
Arkansas becomes the 25th state.
September 1836
Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes the booklength essay Nature, which becomes a catalyst for the literary, artistic, and political transcendentalist movement.
3/4/1837
Martin Van Buren becomes the eighth president.
1/17/1837
The Department of War begins relocating the Chickasaw from their ancestral lands in what is now Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee to present-day Oklahoma.
(1838)
Michigan becomes the 26th state.
3/27/1837
The Creek War of 1836 ends with the relocation of approximately 15,000 Creeks to present-day Oklahoma. More than 3,500 die on the journey.
Spring 1837–mid 1840s
The Panic of 1837, a major financial crisis, begins after the shutdown of the Second Bank of the United States leaves the country with no central bank to regulate financial issues.
1838
The Cherokee are the last Southeastern Native American nation to face removal. More than 5,000 Cherokee die on the Trail of Tears.
8/18/1838
The Wilkes Expedition, made up of six navy ships under Lt. Charles Wilkes’s command, sets out to explore and map the Pacific, Antarctica, and the northwest coast of the US.
3/9/1841
In United States v. The Amistad, the US Supreme Court rules in favor of a group of African captives led by Joseph Cinqué who took over a slave ship, declaring their enslavement illegal.
3/4/1841
William Henry Harrison becomes the ninth president.
Rembrandt Peale, William Henry Harrison (1813)
Total population: 17,063,353
Number of states by the end of the decade: 30
Total number of people, free and enslaved, employed in the North: 2,657,871
5/24/1844
Samuel Morse sends the first message on his long-distance telegraph system: “What hath God wrought?”
1/29/1845
Edgar Allan Poe publishes his poem “The Raven” in the New York Evening Mirror. Later that year, he releases a book of poems titled The Raven and Other Poems
3/3/1845
Florida becomes the 27th state.
3/4/1845
James K. Polk becomes the 11th president.
Max Westfield, James K. Polk (1966)
4/4/1841
Total number of people, free and enslaved, employed in the South: 2,140,998
Number of people who travel to California seeking gold, 1848–55: around 300,000
President Harrison dies. Two days later, Vice President John Tyler becomes the 10th president.
George Peter Alexander Healy, John Tyler (1842)
5/22/1843
About 1,000 people set off in the first major wagon train to travel the Oregon Trail.
5/1/1845
Prominent abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. It sells 5,000 copies within four months.
12/29/1845
Texas becomes the 28th state.
5/13/1846
Congress declares war on Mexico over border disputes, officially starting the MexicanAmerican War.
6/14/1846
8/10/1846
US settlers in California declare independence from Mexico and proclaim the California Republic in the Bear Flag Revolt.
Congress establishes the Smithsonian Institution. A decade earlier, British scientist James Smithson had bequeathed his estate to the US to found an institution dedicated to “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
12/28/1846
Hand-embroidered uniform trousers owned by US sailor Henry Vincent Gerrodette, who served during the military campaign that annexed California
The US and Mexico sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War.
Falls Convention, the
Mexico cedes 525,000 square miles to the US in exchange for $15 million.
5/29/1848
Wisconsin becomes the 30th state.
7/19–20/1848
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and other women
Napoleon
1/23/1849
Elizabeth Blackwell graduates first in her class from Geneva College, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the US.
3/5/1849
Zachary Taylor becomes the 12th president.
1/24/1848
9/10/1846
Elias Howe Jr. patents a lock stitch sewing machine that helped to transform both home sewing and industrial production.
Patent model of Elias Howe Jr.’s sewing machine
Iowa becomes the 29th state.
The California Gold Rush begins when millwright James Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill, near Sacramento.
Alleged first piece of gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill
Fall 1849
Harriet Tubman escapes slavery in Maryland by following the Underground Railroad, a network of organized routes and safe houses owned by abolitionists, reaching freedom in Philadelphia.
Alison Saar, Harriet Tubman Memorial (2007) Swing Low:
1/29/1850
Senator Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850, calling for an end to the slave trade in Washington, DC, a stricter and more widereaching fugitive slave law, and revised borders for states and territories.
7/10/1850
President Zachary Taylor dies on July 9. Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th president.
3/4/1853
Franklin Pierce becomes the 14th president.
3/4/1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act divides the land west of Missouri and Iowa into two territories and permits residents of the new territories to vote on whether to allow slavery, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
6/8/1854
Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna sells 29,670 square miles of northern Mexico to the US for $10 million, money he needs to help quell ongoing rebellions in his country.
8/19/1854
Thirty US soldiers enter a Lakota Sioux camp to arrest a tribe member accused of theft. After a solider fatally shoots Chief Mat ȟó Wayúhi, the Lakota return fire, killing the soldiers. The incident begins the First Sioux War.
3/6/1857
In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the US Supreme Court rules that enslaved people are not citizens and therefore are not entitled to federal protection and that Congress cannot ban slavery in federal territories.
5/11/1858
Minnesota becomes the 32nd state.
Total population: 23,191,876
Number of states by the end of the decade: 33
Number of immigrants or visitors entering the United States from abroad in 1852: 372,725
9/9/1850
California becomes the 31st state.
1850
The Hudson River school, a community of painters known for American landscapes, emerges in New York. Members include Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Asher Durand.
2/27/1851
The 1851 Indian Appropriations Act formally establishes the reservation system and provides funds for relocating Native American tribes.
1854
Violence breaks out in Kansas Territory among proslavery and antislavery settlers ahead of the vote on whether Kansas will be admitted to the union as a free or a slave state.
3/20/1854
The Republican Party is founded by former members of the Whig Party who oppose the expansion of slavery into western territories.
3/31/1854
Number of immigrants entering the United States from Ireland in the 1850s: 157,548
Price of a first-class steamship ticket from New York to San Francisco in 1853: $315
5/29/1851
9/5/1858
The Yakama Indian Wars, which began in 1855, end with US victories at Four Lakes and Spokane Plains. The Yakama and allied tribes are confined to the Yakama reservation in present-day Washington state.
2/14/1859 Oregon becomes the 33rd state.
42c US postage stamp commemorating the Oregon statehood sesquicentennial
3/20/1852
Sojourner Truth delivers her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at a women’s rights convention in Ohio.
The first volume of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published. It had previously appeared as a 40-week serial in The National Era , a Washington, DC, abolitionist newspaper.
The Convention of Kanagawa establishes diplomatic relations between the US and Japan after Cdre. Matthew Perry arrives in Japan to demand the opening of two Japanese ports to US trade.
5/22/1856
Proslavery Congressman Preston Brooks attacks abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the Senate chamber, in retaliation for a speech Sumner delivered two days earlier criticizing slave owners.
3/4/1857
James Buchanan becomes the 15th president.
8/27/1859
The first commercial oil well in the US is drilled by Edwin Drake in Titusville, PA, sparking the nation’s first oil boom.
10/17/1859
Abolitionist John Brown and his followers seize local leaders and the federal armory in Harper's Ferry, VA (now Harpers Ferry, WV), attempting to initiate a slave revolt. US Marines stop the raid.
2/22/1860
The New England Shoemakers Strike of 1860 begins as 3,000 shoemakers walk off their job in Lynn, MA, to protest decreasing wages and long working hours. Over 20,000 join before the strike ends in April.
4/3/1860
12/20/1860
Total population: 31,443,321
Enslaved people: 3,953,760
Free African Americans: 488,070
Estimated Union service members involved in the Civil War: 2,213,363
South Carolina secedes from the Union, citing the federal government’s encroachment on states’ rights and fearing the abolishment of slavery. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas follow in the next two months.
3/4/1861
Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16th president.
Estimated Confederate service members involved in the Civil War: 1,050,000
Estimated number of deaths in the Civil War: between 650,000 to 850,000
A network of relay riders on horseback crosses 1,800 miles in 10 days to deliver the first Pony Express mail packet.
1/29/1861
Kansas becomes the 34th state.
Replica of Pony Express rider saddle
4/12–14/1861
The Civil War begins when the South Carolina militia bombards US-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas join the Confederacy over the next three months.
4c US postage stamp commemorating the Kansas statehood centennial
5/20/1862
accelerates westward expansion by
Piece of brick from Fort Sumter collected postwar by USCT veteran Marquis Peterson
9/2/1864
Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s armies capture Atlanta. In November, Sherman begins his March to the Sea, commanding his armies to destroy any military outposts, infrastructure, and civilian properties along the route to Savannah.
1/1/1863
The Homestead Act of 1862 accelerates westward expansion by offering adult Union citizens, or anyone who legally declares their intent to become a citizen, 160 acres of public land in the West for free.
9/17/1862
all enslaved people in Confederate states free.
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all enslaved people in Confederate states free.
6/20/1863
After pro-Union Virginians ask to rejoin the Union, West Virginia is admitted as the 35th state.
7/1–3/1863
10/31/1864
Nevada becomes the 36th state.
3/3/1865
June 1866–4/29/1868
Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Chief Red Cloud successfully leads the Oglala Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho against soldiers and settlers establishing the Bozeman Trail, a route connecting the Oregon Trail to gold-mining towns in Montana.
3/2/1867
The Senate overrides President Johnson’s veto to pass the Reconstruction Acts outlining terms to readmit former Confederate states to the Union (except for Tennessee, which had already been readmitted).
Maj. Gen. George McClellan halts Gen. Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North at the Battle of Antietam, the deadliest single-day battle in US military history.
Congress establishes the Freedmen’s Bureau to oversee the integration of formerly enslaved people into free society and to supervise all the land seized by Union troops during the Civil War.
4/9/1865
After a defeat at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, VA.
3/1/1867
Nebraska becomes the 37th state.
3/30/1867
The US agrees to purchase Alaska from Russia, paying $7.2 million for the nearly 600,000square-mile territory.
Lee’s army is stopped by Maj. Gen. George Meade at the Battle of Gettysburg. In November, Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the battlefield’s cemetery.
Snare drum purportedly carried during the Civil War
4/15/1865
Lincoln dies the day after being shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th president.
Unidentified photographer, Andrew Johnson (ca. 1855)
12/6/1865
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime in all US states.
Alaska Purchase centennial commemorative button, 1967
7/9/1868
The 14th Amendment is ratified, defining citizenship and extending constitutional rights and liberties to formerly enslaved people.
3/4/1869
Ulysses S. Grant becomes the 18th president.
5/10/1869
The “last spike” ceremony is held in Promontory Summit, UT, to commemorate the completion of the first US transcontinental railroad, connecting East Coast rail lines to Sacramento, CA.
1/10/1870
John D. Rockefeller and partners found the Standard Oil Company, which quickly becomes one of the world’s largest oil companies.
2/3/1870
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, granting all male citizens the right
to vote regardless of race or color.
10/8/1871
The Great Chicago Fire breaks out and burns for two days, destroying 17,500 buildings and killing around 300.
8/2/1874
An expedition of 1,000 men led by Gen. George Custer discovers small amounts of gold in the Black Hills, homelands of the Lakota Sioux. A later discovery of large gold deposits sets off a gold rush.
3/1/1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 passes, guaranteeing access regardless of race to public accommodations, such as inns, public conveyances on land or water, and theaters and other places of public amusement.
Total population: 38,558,371
Population with at least one immigrant parent: 10,892,015
Newspapers and periodicals in circulation: 5,871
5/31/1870
Congress passes the first of three Enforcement Acts that prohibit people from assembling with the intent of attacking or intimidating Black voters.
3/3/1871
With the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act, the US ceases to recognize any Indigenous tribe as an independent nation.
4/10/1871
P. T. Barnum’s traveling circus, dubbed the “Greatest Show on Earth,” opens in Brooklyn.
Poster advertising the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth, ca. 1881–91
3/1/1872
The Yellowstone Park Protection Act becomes law after a report by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden and images by painter Thomas Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson convince Congress to protect the land from public sale.
3/29/1875
In Minor v. Happersett, the US Supreme Court rules that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee women the right to vote.
2/2/1876
3/10/1876
Legal paupers receiving financial support: 116,102
Women ages 10 and over with an occupation: 1,836,288
9/18/1873
The worldwide Panic of 1873 is sparked by the bankruptcy of Jay Cooke & Company, a major US bank, and marks the beginning of the Long Depression.
Patent model for Thomas Edison’s stock ticker, 1873
6/25–26/1876
The National Baseball League is founded.
Spalding brand baseball, the “official league ball” of the National League
11/7/1876
The 1876 presidential election is disputed due to fraud and violence, with electoral votes of four states under review. In January 1877, Congress creates an electoral commission to determine the next president.
3/5/1877
Rutherford B. Hayes becomes the 19th president.
7/14/1877
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 begins when the
telephone call, speaking to his
Three days after receiving a patent for transmitting sounds telegraphically, Alexander Graham Bell makes the first assistant Thomas Watson.
Lakota Sioux leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse along with members of the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne tribes defeat Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, part of the Great Sioux War of 1876.
8/1/1876
Colorado becomes the 38th state.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cuts wages by 10%. Around 100,000 US railroad workers join across the country. The strike ends 52 days later, after intervention by state militias and federal troops.
2/19/1878
Thomas Edison patents the phonograph, a device used to both record and play back sound by means of a hand crank, stylus, and foilcovered cylinder.
2/22/1879
Experimental telephone demonstrated by Bell at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition
10/6/1879
Frank Woolworth opens his first store in Utica, NY, naming it “Woolworth’s Great Five Cent Store.” The pathbreaking retailer offered a variety of low-priced items for sale.
4/29/1879
With the installation of 12 arc lamps, Cleveland, OH, becomes the first US city to employ outdoor electrical lighting.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School opens with the goal of assimilating Native American children into US culture.
Introductory booklet published by the Carlisle Indian School, 1908
5/6/1882
Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, which includes a 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States and imposes new restrictions on Chinese residents.
11/2/1883
Emma Lazarus writes “The New Colossus,” the sonnet later engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty.
1/27/1880
Thomas Edison patents the incandescent light bulb after a successful public demonstration on December 31, 1879.
3/4/1881
James Garfield becomes the 20th president.
5/21/1881
Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross in Dansville, NY, to provide aid and resources during war and natural disasters.
2/18/1885
Total population: 50,155,783
Top reported occupations: Farmer and planter, agricultural worker, general laborer, domestic servant, carpenter and joiner, and store clerk
7/4/1881
The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is founded during a boom period for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with Booker T. Washington as its founding principal and first teacher.
Mark Twain publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the US, following its publication in the UK and Canada the previous year.
First edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade)
2/8/1887
Congress passes the Dawes Act, mandating the division of Native American reservations into individually owned agricultural allotments. It follows legislation that outlawed many Native religious practices (1883) and asserted federal jurisdiction over certain major crimes committed by Native Americans (1885).
10/10/1887
Investigative journalist Nellie Bly publishes an exposé on mental health asylums that leads to major reforms to benefit patients.
9/4/1888
3/1/1886
More than 200,000 railroad workers in five states strike against the Mississippi Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. The strike lasts for two months and leads to at least 10 deaths.
3/4/1886
A Chicago labor rally in support of improved working time turns violent, with seven police officers and at least four protestors dying. The Haymarket Affair and controversial trial that follows spur the movement for the eight-hour workday.
George Eastman patents the Kodak roll-film hand camera, increasing access to photography and making Kodak a household brand.
3/4/1889
Benjamin Harrison becomes the 23rd president.
9/18/1889
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr open Hull-House to provide Chicago’s working-class immigrants with social services and classes in art, history, literature, and domestic services.
Number of states by the end of the decade: 42
Number of public schools in the United States: 225,917
Number of public schools admitting non-white children: 16,800
9/20/1881
A day after President Garfield dies following an early July assassination attempt, Vice President Chester A. Arthur succeeds him, becoming the 21st president.
3/4/1885
Grover Cleveland becomes the 22nd president.
Souvenir ribbon with a portrait of President Cleveland, 1888
Fall 1885
The world’s first skyscraper, the 10-story Home Insurance Building, is completed in Chicago.
10/28/1886
The Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
12/8/1886
The American Federation of Labor is established in Columbus, OH, to serve as an association of trade and labor unions.
11/2/1889
North Dakota and South Dakota become the 39th and 40th states, respectively.
11/8/1889
Montana becomes the 41st state.
11/11/1889
Washington becomes the 42nd state.
2/18/1890
The NWSA forms, advocating primarily for women’s right to vote.
Delegate ribbon for Fort Worth, TX, suffrage convention, 1894
7/2/1890
Total population: 62,979,766
Native-born population: 53,372,703
Foreign-born population: 9,249,547
7/3/1890
Idaho becomes the 43rd state.
7/10/1890
Wyoming becomes the 44th state.
10/1/1890
Number of Native Americans living in the US: 248,253
Percent of women in the US who are widowed: 7.1%
Lobbied by naturalist John Muir and others, Congress establishes Yosemite as a national park.
Thomas Moran, Half Dome, Yosemite (1873)
Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits business practices that unreasonably restrict interstate commerce or trade with foreign nations and competition in the marketplace.
1/17/1893
Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawaiʻ i is overthrown by a group demanding US annexation of the country. Months later, President Cleveland refuses annexation, leading to the shortlived Republic of Hawaiʻ i.
3/4/1893
Grover Cleveland becomes the 24th president.
5/1/1893
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition— also known as the Chicago World’s Fair— opens. Over the next six months, more than 27 million people attend the exposition.
8/16/1896
12/29/1890
The US Army kills between 150 and 300 Lakota men, women, and children at the Wounded Knee Massacre.
5/21/1892
Journalist Ida B. Wells publishes an anti-lynching editorial in her newspaper, the Free Press and Headlight, which sparks a riot in Memphis, TN. She soon begins investigating and reporting on lynchings across the South.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, 100,000 miners rush to Canada’s Yukon Territory. Many also go to Alaska, founding towns and disrupting the lifestyles of Alaska Natives.
3/4/1897
William McKinley becomes the 25th president.
4/25/1898
The US enters the Spanish-American War after US newspapers blame the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, Cuba, on Spain.
7/6/1892
During the Homestead Strike near Pittsburgh, PA, gunfire between Carnegie Steel workers and Pinkerton detectives, part of a private law enforcement group often called to suppress labor movements, kills 12 and injures many.
5/11/1894–7/20/1894
1/4/1896
Utah becomes the 45th state.
5/18/1896
Replica of a late 19th-century Pinkerton National Detective Agency badge
The Pullman Strike, originally targeting the Pullman railroad car company, grows nationwide and involves 250,000 workers, costing the railroads millions in damaged property and lost revenue. President Cleveland uses federal troops to break the strike.
Sign from a segregated railroad station, ca. 1930s
6/12/1898
Filipino revolutionary forces declare their independence from Spain after 333 years of colonial rule. Both the Spanish and the US government refuse to recognize Filipino sovereignty.
7/7/1898
The US Congress passes a joint resolution providing for the annexation of Hawai ʻ i. Native Hawaiians, including the overthrown queen, Lili ʻuokalani, protest annexation by shutting themselves in their homes.
11/10/1898
In response to the election of a
In Plessy v. Ferguson , the US Supreme Court legalizes racial segregation in public facilities as long as “separate but equal” services and accommodations are offered.
multiracial government, citizens in Wilmington, NC, set fire to the building of an African American–owned daily newspaper, destroy other businesses, and kill an estimated 60 Black citizens.
12/10/1898
The 1898 Treaty of Paris ends the Spanish-American War. Spain cedes Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the US for $20 million, and the US establishes a protectorate over Cuba.
2/4/1899
The Philippine-American War begins as Filipino nationalists resist US occupation.
4/12/1900
After the Spanish-American War, the Foraker Act establishes a government of mostly presidential appointees in the US territory of Puerto Rico that restricts the islanders' participation.
4/17/1900
Tutuila becomes a US territory after several island chiefs sign the Treaty of Cession of Tutuila. The US soon annexes additional eastern islands of the Samoa Islands archipelago, establishing what will become American Samoa.
1/10/1901
Total population: 76,212,168
Military personnel stationed abroad: 91,219
Total number of workers in manufacturing: 7,085,992
The discovery of the Lucas oil geyser in Texas creates a new oil boom. The high rate and quality of the oil flow makes burning fuel made from it economically viable, leading to the modern petroleum industry.
9/14/1901
President McKinley dies from complications after an attempted assassination. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th president.
Gari Melchers, Portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt (1908)
Women over 16 reported as gainfully employed in 1900: 4,833,630 (20.6% of the female population)
Children under 15 employed: more than 1.75 million
2/19/1902
The Roosevelt administration, using the Sherman Antitrust Act, files a lawsuit to break up J. P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Company, a railroad conglomerate. The US Supreme Court sides with Roosevelt, setting off a seven-year “trust-busting” campaign.
4/29/1902
The Chinese Exclusion Act is extended indefinitely. Immigration restrictions remain, and Chinese Americans without a certificate of residence face deportation.
Score book for a May 1903 game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs
5/20/1902
The US ends its military occupation of Cuba after four years, and the country becomes known as the Republic of Cuba, though the US retains its right to intervene in Cuban affairs.
10/1/1903
The first World Series of Major League Baseball begins between the American League champion Boston Americans and the National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates.
12/17/1903
The Wright brothers achieve the first successful powered airplane flight in Kitty Hawk, NC.
4/25/1904
The National Child Labor Committee, a private, nonprofit organization, is formed to advocate for legal restrictions on child labor, capitalizing on growing public concern and the publicity generated by Mary “Mother” Jones’s 1903 Children’s Crusade.
6/28/1904
7/11/1905
African American intellectuals led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter found the Niagara Movement to oppose segregation and advocate for civil rights.
R. P. Slater, photograph of Niagara Movement founders (1905)
2/1/1907
President Theodore Roosevelt establishes the Dillingham Commission to research the consequences of recent immigration. Three years later, the commission recommends limiting immigration and introducing quotas for some Asian and European countries.
10/22/1907
The Panic of 1907 causes a major economic contraction after the third largest US bank, the Knickerbocker Trust Company, fails. The panic reignites debate over the need for a central bank.
4/18/1906
When a magnitude 7.9 earthquake hits San Francisco, more than 3,000 residents are killed and over 220,000 are left homeless.
Chinatown shop sign that may have survived the San Francisco earthquake
11/16/1907
Oklahoma becomes the 46th state.
10/1/1908
6/30/1906
Congress enacts the Pure Food and Drug Act prohibiting the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce after Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle sparks a public uproar over food safety.
12/24/1906
Inventor Reginald Fessenden transmits the first long-distance radio broadcast of a human voice. His research leads to the development of AM radio.
2/12/1909
The Ford Motor Company releases the Model T, a relatively affordable automobile that makes car travel possible for many Americans for the
Helen Keller becomes the first deaf and blind person to earn a college degree, graduating with honors from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA.
1892
1903
3/4/1909
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is formed by W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others to advocate for the abolition of segregation.
William Howard Taft becomes the 27th president.
3/25/1911
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire kills 146 garment workers, mostly young women, drawing attention to factory conditions and leading to improved factory safety standards.
5/18/1911
The US Supreme Court rules that John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company violated antitrust legislation and must be broken up, following journalist Ida M. Tarbell’s exposé of the company’s business practices.
4/14–15/1912
5/30/1911
Total population: 92,228,496
Number of states by the end of the decade: 48
Least populous state: Nevada, with 81,875 residents
The first Indianapolis 500 car race takes place.
1911
Ragtime composer Scott Joplin completes and publishes the score for his second opera, Treemonisha: Opera in Three Acts.
Music score for Joplin’s Treemonisha , 1911
1/6/1912
Urban population (i.e., residing in cities and other incorporated places of 2,500 inhabitants or more): 42,623,383
US personnel who served in World War I: 4,800,000
New Mexico becomes the 47th state.
2/14/1912
Arizona becomes the 48th state.
Life vest from the Titanic
9/27/1912
The RMS Titanic sinks on its way from Southampton, England, to New York, killing around 1,500.
W. C. Handy publishes “Memphis Blues,” the first commercially successful blues song.
12/23/1913
2/17/1913
The Armory Show, the first large exhibition of modern art in the United States, attracts 87,000 visitors as well as major patrons of the arts to New York City.
3/3/1913
Large crowds disrupt a 5,000woman march in Washington, DC, for the right to vote. Some women are attacked for their participation.
“Great Demand” banner carried by suffragist Marie Gilmer Louthan, 1917–18
8/4/1914
Congress establishes the Federal Reserve system as the central bank of the United States, providing the country with a safe, stable financial and monetary system.
$20 note issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, MO, 1915
2/5/1917
Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917), which restricts immigration from large portions of the continent of Asia.
4/6/1917
Months after agreeing not to attack US ships, Germany resumes submarine attacks on US vessels. The US declares war on Germany, entering World War I.
Curtiss JN-4D “Jenny,” World War I trainer aircraft
8/15/1914
US postage stamp commemorating the Arizona statehood centennial
A week after World War I breaks out in Europe, President Wilson proclaims neutrality and does not enter the war.
The Panama Canal opens to traffic. The finished canal reduces the sailing distance from New York to San Francisco by roughly 7,800 miles.
3/11/1918
7/28/1915
3/4/1913
Woodrow Wilson becomes the 28th president.
Edmund Charles Tarbell, Woodrow Wilson (1920–21)
Following the assassination of Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, US Marines are sent to the country to prevent anarchy.
March 1916
George Washington Carver publishes the pamphlet How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It for Human Consumption part of his research on crops and planting strategies for US crops.
One of the first cases of the Spanish flu is recorded in Fort Riley, KS. Over the course of the epidemic, more than 675,000 Americans will die.
Dr. A. Langham’s Lightning Liniment claiming to prevent the Spanish flu
9/1/1916
Congress passes the Keating-Owen Act to limit the working hours of the 2 million children employed in the United States.
11/29/1916
Occupying US forces set up a military government in the Dominican Republic that will last until September 1924.
11/11/1918
9/26/1918
Allied forces, including some 1.2 million US troops, begin World War I’s Meuse-Argonne offensive. More than 26,000 Americans are killed, but this Allied victory contributes to the war’s end.
The armistice is signed by the Allies and their last remaining enemy, Germany, ending World War I.
1/16/1920
The 18th Amendment takes effect, outlawing the manufacture and sale of alcohol and starting the Prohibition era.
1/19/1920
The arrest of antiwar dissenters and immigrant radicals under the 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 Sedition Act inspires the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Total population: 106,021,537
Percentage of households with radios in 1929: 35 to 40%
Percentage of families earning under $1,500 a year in 1929: 42%
Percentage of people ages 5 to 20 attending school: 64.3%
Most common country of origin for foreign-born census respondents: Germany
4/14/1922
The Wall Street Journal investigates the Teapot Dome Scandal, a massive corruption case centered on Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly leasing US naval petroleum reserves to private companies at low rates.
11/13/1922
In Ozawa v. United States , the US Supreme Court rules that Japanese Americans are ineligible for citizenship because they are not white. Three months later, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind finds the same for South Asians.
7/10/1925
High school teacher John Thomas Scopes is arrested for teaching about evolution. The subsequent trial draws national attention to the debate between believers in scientific evolution and Christian creationism.
John T. Scopes, a month before the trial
February 1926
Native American activist
Zitkála-Šá and her husband, Raymond Talefase Bonnin, cofound the National Council of American Indians to coordinate Indigenous advocacy efforts around the country.
5/20–21/1927
Charles Lindbergh completes the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic in the
3/19/1920
The Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the final time due to its concerns about limiting US sovereignty, as the treaty requires signatories to join the League of Nations.
8/18/1920
The 19th Amendment is ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote.
The Harlem Renaissance, a vibrant period of African American cultural expression, begins. Encompassing poetry, prose, painting, sculpture, jazz, swing, opera, and dance, it takes root in Manhattan and spreads to other cities.
9/17/1920
Fourteen teams form the American Professional Football Association, the precursor to the National Football League. Additional teams join during the 1920 season.
3/4/1921
Warren G. Harding becomes the 29th president.
Margaret Lindsay Williams, Warren G. Harding (1923)
8/3/1923
One day after President Harding dies of a heart attack, Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes the 30th president.
6/1/1921
Racial violence flares in Tulsa, OK. Over two days, rioters burn the African American Greenwood neighborhood. Historians believe some 300 people
5/26/1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 ends immigration from all Asian countries and significantly restricts immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
12/10/1924
Henry Gerber founds the Society for Human Rights, the first US gay rights organization.
8/16/1925
Charlie Chaplin directs and stars in the silent film The Gold Rush
11/18/1928
Mickey Mouse officially debuts in Steamboat Willie, the first animated film with synchronized sound released to a wide audience.
1/17/1929
Through observations of nearby galaxies, Edwin Hubble discovers that the universe is expanding. He measures the rate of its expansion, a key step toward determining its age.
11/12/1925
Louis Armstrong and his band, the Hot Five, record their first jazz session together.
10/6/1926
Babe Ruth sets a World Series record by hitting three home runs in one game.
Ball autographed by the 1926 New York Yankees
10/22/1926
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises, which depicts the disillusioned Lost Generation following World War I. The novel sells out its initial print run of 5,000 copies in just two months.
3/4/1929
Herbert Hoover becomes the 31st president.
10/28/1929
of St. Louis
Hubble using a camera telescope at California’s Palomar Observatory, 1949
The New York stock market crashes, with the Dow Jones average registering a record loss of nearly 13 percent. Most date the start of the Great Depression to this crash.
9/14/1930
Drought and depletion of grass in the Great Plains set off the first storm of the Dust Bowl, a nine-year ecological disaster.
3/25/1931
Nine Black teenagers, known as the Scottsboro Boys, are falsely charged with raping two white women in Alabama. The US Supreme Court overturns the convictions in 1932, demanding a retrial because the boys did not have adequate legal representation.
7/28/1932
President Hoover sends army troops to expel protesting World War I veterans camped in Washington, DC, who are demanding the bonus pay promised to them.
3/4/1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd president.
Henry Salem Hubbell, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1935)
3/12/1933
Total population: 123,202,624
Decrease in national real GDP from 1929 to 1933: 29%
Peak unemployment rate: 25%, in 1933
Pin-back button supporting the Scottsboro Boys
10/18/1931
Number of banks that failed from 1930 to 1933: around 7,000, nearly one-third of the US banking system
Number of Great Plains residents displaced by the Dust Bowl: 2.5 million
Gangster Al Capone is found guilty and convicted of tax evasion. A month later, he is sentenced to eleven years in federal prison.
1932
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis begins with 600 Black male subjects. Once penicillin is found effective, it is deliberately withheld from the men so public health workers can observe the progression of the untreated disease.
6/18/1934
The Indian Reorganization Act recognizes the authority of tribal governments. It also allocates funds for education on reservations and establishes hiring preference for Native Americans in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
April 1935
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright begins construction of Fallingwater in Stewart Township, PA, one of his most famous buildings.
8/3–9/1936
NBC microphone used to broadcast Roosevelt’s “fireside chats”
8/14/1935 (SSA); 5/6/1935 (WPA)
5/18/1933
Roosevelt holds the first “fireside chat,” broadcasting his policies directly to the American people via radio.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a major New Deal program, is launched. It employs 9,000 people in the Tennessee River Valley to build flood-control dams and other infrastructure facilities.
9/30/1933
As Thousands Cheer, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, opens on Broadway with blues singer Ethel Waters in a starring role. It is the first Broadway show to give an African American star equal billing with white actors.
Roosevelt introduces the Second New Deal, implementing the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration, and a more graduated income tax system, to help lift the country out of the Great Depression.
Plywood viola made in 1938 by 16-year-old Iris Bancroft while participating in a Chicago WPA program
5/6/1937
Jesse Owens wins four gold medals and breaks world and Olympic records at the Nazi-hosted Berlin Olympics.
The German airship Hindenburg catches fire over Lakehurst, NJ, and crashes, killing 36 people.
4/28–30/1938
Luisa Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright organize a convention in Los Angeles for El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española (the Spanish-Speaking Peoples’ Congress), a Latino civil rights organization based in the United States.
5/26/1938
The House Committee on Un-American Activities forms
9/30/1935
The Boulder Dam— now known as the Hoover Dam—is dedicated after four years of construction. It will irrigate farmland, control flooding, and, in time, provide hydroelectric power. It also impacts the environment around the Colorado River delta.
6/25/1938
to investigate disloyalty to the country and subversive activities performed by both private citizens and public employees.
Roosevelt signs the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing a minimum wage, a standard 40-hour workweek, restrictions on child labor, and rules on overtime pay and recordkeeping.
4/9/1939
Denied the right to perform at Constitution Hall, Marian Anderson instead sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter.
5/20–21/1932
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman, and the second person, to complete a nonstop, solo flight across the Atlantic.
Wool-lined leather flight suit owned by Amelia Earhart
12/5/1933
The 21st Amendment is ratified, ending Prohibition.
6/30/1936
Margaret Mitchell publishes Gone with the Wind dramatizing life in the US South after the Civil War. It sells nearly 1 million copies by the end of the year.
3c US postage stamp celebrating the completion of Boulder Dam
8/25/1939
The Wizard of Oz premieres in US theaters. Its vibrant, saturated colors are the result of being filmed in threestrip Technicolor, a process the film
would help popularize.
11/11/1940
The US Army receives the first prototype Jeep, a rugged and nimble combat vehicle.
8/14/1941
Total population: 132,164,569
Most populous urban areas: Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia
US armed forces personnel involved in World War II: more than 16,000,000
President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill release the Atlantic Charter, which commits to end territorial expansion, affirms selfdetermination for all peoples, and reduces trade restrictions, among other provisions.
12/7/1941
Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor in Hawai ʻ i, damaging or destroying eight battleships and killing 2,403 sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians. The US enters World War II the next day.
1/19/1942
Number of Japanese Americans who served in the military in World War II: 33,000
Percentage of the nonagricultural workforce in a union: 35.5%
Roosevelt approves the development of an atomic bomb, leading to the establishment of the Manhattan Project.
2/19/1942
Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066, which authorizes the forced incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in camps across the Western United States.
8/4/1942
Congress establishes the Bracero Program, giving millions of Mexican men short-term labor contracts to ease a farm labor shortage exacerbated by Japanese American incarceration.
3/31/1943
Oklahoma!, the first musical written by the duo Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opens on Broadway. It is a box office hit and will have 2,212 performances in its original run.
5/7/1945
6/6/1944
April 1942
Students at the University of Chicago found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which promotes key tactics of the Civil Rights Movement, including sit-ins and freedom rides.
US, British, Canadian, and other Allied forces land on Normandy beaches on D-Day, invading Nazioccupied France.
11/15–18/1944
The National Congress of American Indians forms to oppose the federal government’s efforts to terminate tribal rights and force assimilation into
5/4/1942
The first 29 Navajo Code Talkers are sworn in. During World War II, they and members of at least 14 other Native American tribes use their tribal languages to encode thousands of critical communications, none of which were ever decrypted by enemy forces.
6/3–7/1942
US Navy aircraft carriers ambush and defeat a major Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, near Midway Atoll in the Pacific.
4/11/1945
near Weimar, Germany. The Allies liberate hundreds of camps and subcamps before the war’s end. Six million Jewish people and millions of others were murdered between 1933 and 1945.
4/12/1945
President Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes the 33rd president.
Congressional Gold Medal honoring Navajo Code Talkers, 2001
German representatives surrender to the Allies. The surrender takes effect on May 8, known as Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day.
8/6/1945 and 8/9/1945
US aircraft drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They kill a combined 120,000 people immediately, and tens of thousands more die of radiation in subsequent months. A week later, Japan agrees to conditions for surrender.
US troops liberate 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp
Jay Wesley Jacobs, Harry S Truman (1945)
11/26/1945
2/14/1946
Saxophonist Charlie Parker, leading an ensemble of Miles Davis, Sadik Hakim, Curley Russell, Milt Jackson, and Max Roach, records “Thriving from a Riff,” an early bebop-style jazz composition, a music style he helped pioneer.
Inventors unveil the first generalpurpose electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.
10/14/1947
the US armed forces. In July, Truman issues Executive Order 9981, ending the segregation of the armed forces.
4/4/1949
The US, Canada, and ten European countries form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
12/28/1945
Air Force Captain Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager is the first person to break the sound barrier, flying in the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis 6/12/1948
8/3/1949
The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act guarantees women the right to serve as permanent regular members of
The National Basketball Association forms through the merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.
The War Brides Act enables non-US spouses and children of US military service members to immigrate to the United States regardless of nationalorigin quotas.
2/9/1950
Senator Joseph McCarthy claims to have a list of secret Communist Party members working in the State Department, triggering accusations of disloyalty. This begins the 1950s Red Scare, during which many are accused of being Communists and fired.
7/1/1950
The first US ground troops land in Korea to help South Korea recapture its capital following the North Korean People’s Army invasion of Seoul on June 28.
3/26/1953
Dr. Jonas Salk announces the successful testing of a polio vaccine on a small group of adults and children. A 1952 polio outbreak had seen 58,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths.
Test tubes and wire rack used in Salk’s test for polio antibodies
6/1/1954
2/27/1951
Total population: 151,325,798
Total number of states by the end of the decade: 50
Average number of people per household: 3.51
The 22nd Amendment is ratified, limiting presidential terms to two.
6/27/1952
Number of commercial broadcast radio stations in 1950: 2,336
Percentage of respondents who reported owning a television in 1955: 65%
The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act ends Asian exclusion but upholds the quota system, prioritizing immigrants with specific skill sets or with families living in the US.
Trunk owned by Japanese immigrant Kumataro Sugimoto, ca. 1902
1/20/1953
Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the 34th president.
6/19/1953
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of spying, are executed by electric chair. They had been accused of giving information on radar, nuclear weapon designs, and more to the Soviet Union.
7/27/1953
The Korean War ends with an armistice and the creation of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a roughly 2 ½ -mile-wide strip of land that divides North and South Korea.
8/28/1955
8/1/1953
House Concurrent Resolution 108 is passed, ending federal recognition of Indigenous tribal governments. Over 3 million acres of tribal lands are relinquished back to the US over the next 17 years.
5/17/1954
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the US Supreme Court declares state-sponsored school segregation unconstitutional and ends the separate but equal doctrine.
10/3/1955
12/5/1955
The US begins the Saigon Military Mission, a covert operation focused on training forces and advising the government in South Vietnam to aid their fight against Soviet-backed North Vietnam.
9/29/1954
of a hard-hit fly ball during the
6/4/1956
New York Giants center fielder Willie Mays makes “The Catch,” an iconic over-the-shoulder grab of a hard-hit fly ball during the opening game of the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians.
9/25/1957
Elvis Presley’s single “Heartbreak Hotel” simultaneously tops the board Pop, Country, and R & B charts.
7/29/1958
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black youth, is abducted, beaten, and murdered in Mississippi after allegedly insulting a white woman. His mother’s decision to allow publication of photos of Till’s open casket brings national attention to the violence and galvanizes the Civil Rights Movement.
The Montgomery bus boycott begins days after the arrest of Rosa Parks. It lasts for 13 months.
The Mickey Mouse Club, a popular children’s variety television series that runs from 1955–59 and features mostly teen performers as the cast of Mouseketeers, airs for the first time.
Nine African American teenagers known as the Little Rock Nine are protected by National Guard and army troops as they attend a formerly segregated high school in Little Rock, AK.
Congress establishes the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.
9/12/1958
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments invents the integrated circuit, or microchip, a fundamental element of modern electronics.
7/24/1959
Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev have a highly publicized debate about communism and capitalism in a model kitchen at the American National Exhibition, held in Moscow.
8/21/1959
1/3/1959
Hawai ʻ i becomes the 50th state.
Alaska becomes the 49th state.
3/9/1959
The Mattel Company introduces the Barbie doll. Barbie doll prototype, ca. 1958
2/1/1960
Four African American college students stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s counter in Greensboro, NC, after being denied service. The sit-in sparks similar civil rights protests across the nation.
5/9/1960
Stools from Woolworth’s used during Greensboro sit-ins
9/30/1962
César Chávez and Dolores Huerta found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to advocate for the rights of agricultural workers.
Pin-back button for the National Farm Workers Association
10/16–28/1962
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and the Soviet Union threaten nuclear war over the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
7/2/1964
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or national origin.
3/2/1965
The US begins Operation Rolling Thunder, three years of bombing targets in North Vietnam.
3/7/1965
State troopers attack peaceful protesters attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, AL. The violence airs on national TV.
9/8/1966
Star Trek premieres on NBC in the United States. This first series runs for only three seasons.
6/12/1967
Total population: 179,323,175
Population 25 years and over with a high school diploma: 41.1%
Population of voting age in 1960: around 108,458,000
The first oral contraceptive is approved by the FDA. Within two years, 1.2 million American women are using birth control pills.
1/20/1961
John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th president.
5/4/1961
The Freedom Rides, a series of civil rights protests that challenge segregation on interstate buses, begin.
8/28/1963
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech calling for racial equality before 250,000
Votes cast for president in 1960: around 68,839,000 (63.5% voter participation)
Percentage of American households that watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing: 94%
2/20/1962
Astronaut John Glenn, aboard Friendship 7, becomes the first American to orbit Earth. The flight lasts for 4 hours and 55 minutes, during which Glenn travels 75,679 miles, orbiting Earth three times.
7/9/1962
Artist Andy Warhol exhibits his Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, a major work in the pop art movement.
participants at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
9/15/1963
The Ku Klux Klan bomb a Baptist church in Birmingham, AL, killing teenage girls Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair and injuring 22.
11/22/1963
President Kennedy is assassinated. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th president.
2/11/1964
The Beatles perform their first concert in the US at a venue in Washington, DC.
4/7/1964
IBM releases its System/360 mainframe computer line and operating system.
8/6/1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws discriminatory practices in voting and provides for wider enforcement under the 15th Amendment.
4/4/1968
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN, setting off widespread unrest and violence in over 100 US cities.
In Loving v. Virginia , the US Supreme Court strikes down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
7/28/1968
The American Indian Movement is founded by Native American activists to advocate against discrimination and for treaty rights and tribal land reclamation.
1/20/1969
Richard Nixon becomes the 37th president.
9/8/1965
Over 800 workers with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee strike against 10 table grape growers in Delano, CA. They are later joined by members of the NFWA. The strike is not settled until 1970.
10/3/1965
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 repeals all national-origin quotas, leading to a surge in Asian immigration.
6/30/1966
Feminist activists form the National Organization for Women (NOW).
6/28/1969
A police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village sparks the Stonewall riots in New York City.
7/20/1969
8/15–18/1969
Over 400,000 people attend Woodstock, a music festival in Bethel, NY.
The Apollo 11 lunar module lands on the Moon, and Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the Moon.
4/22/1970
The first Earth Day, created to spread awareness of pollution and other ecological issues, takes place, with 20 million participating.
6/17/1972
Five men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. The security coordinator for Nixon’s reelection campaign is soon revealed to be one of the men.
6/23/1972
Title IX goes into effect. Passed by Congress as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational programs receiving federal aid.
4/28/1970
Total population: 203,302,031
Average age: 28.1
Percentage of women 25 years and over with a bachelor’s degree: 8.1%
Following months of secret bombings of supply lines and military bases in Cambodia, President Nixon deploys ground troops to Cambodia to fight alongside South Vietnamese troops.
5/4/1970
Four students are killed and nine are wounded by Ohio National Guard troops during an antiwar protest at Kent State University.
2/21–28/1972
Number of US armed forces members deployed in the Vietnam War: 3,403,000
Number of US service members killed in action during the Vietnam War: 47,434
On a visit to Chinese leader Chairman Mao Zedong, Nixon establishes diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
Ping-Pong paddles with caricatures of Nixon and Mao
3/22/1972
The Equal Rights Amendment is sent to state legislatures with a seven-year deadline for ratification.
1/22/1973
The US Supreme Court decides Roe v. Wade, ruling in favor of nationwide access to abortion. The ruling sparks immediate debate.
1/27/1973
The amendment is not ratified by its 1979 or extended 1982 deadline, falling 3 states short of the 38 needed.
The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet-Nam is signed by North and South Vietnam and the US, calling for a ceasefire and ending direct US involvement. Despite the agreement, fighting continues until the fall of Saigon in 1975.
2/27/1973
About 200 Oglala Lakota activists begin a 71-day armed occupation of the Wounded Knee Massacre site, protesting broken treaties.
8/9/1974
Facing impeachment over the break-in at the Watergate and subsequent cover-up, Nixon resigns. Vice President Gerald Ford becomes the 38th president.
4/4/1975
Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft in order to develop and sell software for the Altair 8800, a newly released personal computer.
9/30/1976
Congress passes the Copyright Act of 1976, increasing the length of copyright
to the life of a creator plus 50 years. The new law takes effect in January 1978.
1/20/1977
Jimmy Carter becomes the 39th president.
10/17/1973
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposes an embargo banning exports of oil to the US, sparking an energy crisis. The US economy, already experiencing high unemployment and inflation, takes a hit and a recession begins.
2/4/1974
Heiress Patty Hearst is kidnapped in Berkeley, CA, by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in order to negotiate for the release of two of their members from jail.
5/25/1977
Star Wars: A New Hope premieres, grossing more than $500 million worldwide in its initial release.
C-3PO and R2-D2 from the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi
8/20/1977 and 9/5/1977
1978
3/28/1979
NASA launches the Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 spacecraft (nonsequential) to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
The hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five forms.
Voyager golden record “Sounds of Earth,” 1977
The core of the Three Mile Island nuclear power station, near Harrisburg, PA, experiences a partial meltdown in one of its reactors. No one is harmed.
11/4/1979
Iranian student revolutionaries seize the US embassy in Tehran and hold 52 diplomats and other embassy staff hostage. The crisis lasts for 444 days.
7/3/1981
The New York Times publishes the first major story on a rare cancer affecting gay men. It follows a June report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on what will become known as AIDS.
8/1/1981
MTV begins broadcasting music videos at 12:01 a.m. The first video is “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles.
1/12/1980
Total population: 226,542,199
Median family income in 1980: $21,020
Percentage of households with no telephone available: 7.1%
The Sugarhill Gang’s single “Rapper’s Delight” is the first rap record to make the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at no. 36.
3/17/1980
The Refugee Act of 1980, in response to the influx of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, increases US refugee admissions to 50,000 per year and establishes a review process to adjust the limit.
May–October 1980
Fleeing political persecution in their home country, 125,000 Cubans arrive in Florida,
Panel
1/7/1982
the
Percentage of the population 25 years and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher: 16.2%
Women’s earnings in 1989 as a percentage of men’s, for full-time wage and salary workers: 70.1%
in what later becomes known as the Mariel boatlift.
6/1/1980
CNN, or the Cable News Network, debuts as the first 24-hour TV news channel.
1/20/1981
Ronald Reagan becomes the 40th president.
Everett Raymond Kinstler, Ronald Reagan (1991)
12/2/1982
2/28/1983
The series finale of M*A*S*H airs on CBS. More than 105 million viewers in the US watch the finale live.
The Commodore 64, an inexpensive home computer, is introduced for sale. At least 17 million units are sold worldwide in the next 11 years.
7/28/1984–8/12/1984
Los Angeles hosts the 1984 Olympics.
5/16/1985
A paper published in Nature announces the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic.
Olympic gold medal won by Carl Lewis, 1984
11/12/1984
Madonna releases her album . It includes such hits as “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl” and goes on to be one of the best-selling albums of all time.
1/26/1988
The Phantom of the Opera opens on Broadway.
The Phantom of the Opera playbill, 1993
1/20/1989
George H. W. Bush becomes the 41st president.
Spectrograph used to measure chemicals in the middle atmosphere
Barney Clark receives the world’s first successful implantation of a permanent artificial heart. Dr. William surgery.
6/18/1983
Serving as a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger for mission STS-7, astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.
1/28/1986
9/8/1986
On its 10th flight, the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members.
6/12/1987
Button memorializing the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger
Oprah Winfrey hosts the first national broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show
3/24/1989
Speaking to crowds near the Berlin Wall, Reagan calls on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”
10/11/1987
With some 750,000 participants, the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights raises
Banner, National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights awareness of the AIDS epidemic.
The tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground and spills 11 million gallons of oil into the sea, an ecological disaster affecting more than 1,300 miles of Alaska shoreline.
12/20/1989
“Remember the
US troops invade Panama after President Bush authorizes military force to depose Gen. Manuel Noriega, wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges, and swear in elected president Guillermo Endara Galimany.
4/24/1990
The Hubble Space Telescope, an orbiting observatory, is launched to explore the universe and produce images of distant objects.
9/24/1991
Nirvana releases its album Nevermind, bringing grunge music and alternative rock to a mainstream audience.
4/29–5/4/1992
Four white policemen are acquitted on charges of use of excessive force after severely beating Black motorist Rodney King. Outraged over the trial and verdict, uprisings erupt in Los Angeles.
7/26/1990
Total population: 248,709,873
Average number of people per family: 3.16
Number of people living in urban or suburban areas: 187,053,487
The Americans with Disabilities Act takes effect. The act outlaws discrimination on the basis of disability and establishes accessibility requirements for public facilities.
8/12/1990
Explorer and fossil collector Sue Hendrickson discovers FMNH PR 2081, otherwise known as Sue, the most complete T. rex skeleton ever found.
11/16/1990
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
9/22/1994
The first episode of the sitcom Friends airs on NBC.
4/19/1995
Domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh detonates a bomb in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168.
4/27/1995
The Global Positioning System (GPS), a satellite-based navigation system initially developed for use by the US military, is fully operational.
12/19/1997
4/6/1996
The first Major League Soccer game is played between the San Jose Clash and DC United. The league formed as a condition of the US hosting the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
3/22/1997
The unusually bright Comet HaleBopp, which had been visible in the night sky since May 1996, makes its closest pass to Earth.
Number of people living in rural areas: 61,656,386
Civilian population 16 and older with a disability: 22,351,129
becomes law. It requires repatriation of Native American human remains and sacred artifacts housed in federally funded museums and agencies to family or tribal representatives.
1/17/1991
Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the US begins bombing Iraqi forces in Operation Desert Storm, the military campaign to liberate Kuwait.
1/20/1993
Bill Clinton becomes the 42nd president.
12/17/1992
The North American Free Trade Agreement is signed by the US, Mexico, and Canada, reducing tariffs and other trade barriers on most goods produced by the three nations.
2/28/1994
The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy enables closeted gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve in the military while prohibiting openly gay members from serving.
4/13/1997
Twenty-one-year-old Tiger Woods wins the US Masters golf tournament, his first major championship.
James Cameron’s blockbuster movie Titanic starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, is released.
8/20/1998
In retaliation for the al-Qaeda bombing of two US embassies in East Africa that resulted in the deaths of 224 people, President Clinton orders attacks on sites in Afghanistan and Sudan linked to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
11/20/1998
NASA and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, launch the first module of the International Space Station.
4/20/1999
Astronaut Shannon Lucid’s flight suit worn on Space Station Mir
1/19/1999
BlackBerry releases its first mobile device, a two-way pager with email capability.
Two students kill 12 classmates and a teacher and injure many others at Columbine High School in Colorado, in one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
3/10/2000
The stock market’s “dot-com bubble,” marked by rapid growth in valuations for Internet companies, reaches its peak. Over the next year and a half, the bubble bursts, and the market loses 78% of its value, starting a recession.
1/15/2001
Jimmy Wales and Lawrence Sanger launch Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that can be edited and reviewed by users.
1/20/2001
George W. Bush becomes the 43rd president.
10/26/2001
Total population: 281,421,906
Total housing units in 2000: 115,904,641, of which 91% are occupied
Median value of a home in the United States: $119,600
The USA PATRIOT Act expands federal surveillance capabilities, including phone taps, and increases penalties for terrorist acts.
9/4/2002
Kelly Clarkson wins the first season of American Idol, a reality television singing competition.
2/1/2003
The Space Shuttle Columbia breaks apart upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere, killing its seven crew members.
2/4/2004
The Facebook, a social media website, is launched for college students. It later opens to more users and rebrands as Facebook.
5/17/2004
Massachusetts issues its first marriage licenses to same-sex couples after becoming the first state to legalize gay marriage.
6/21/2004
SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spacecraft to achieve human spaceflight. Flight 15P lasts 24 minutes.
Number of civilians employed ages 16 and older in 2000: 129,721,512
Increase in unemployment from January 2008 to October 2009: 5%
9/11/2001
Terrorists hijack four passenger planes, crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the Pentagon near Washington, DC, and one into a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people die in the terrorist attacks.
10/7/2001
In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the war in Afghanistan begins with US and UK airstrikes on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets.
4/23/2005
8/29/2005
10/24/2006
6/29/2007
December 2007
7/15/2006
3/20/2003
The US leads a coalition of American, British, Australian, and Polish troops in the invasion of Iraq, including the bombing of the palace complex of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
4/14/2003
YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim uploads the first video, “Me at the zoo,” to the videosharing platform.
Country-pop singer Taylor Swift releases her debut album, which spends 24 nonconsecutive weeks at no. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart.
Apple Computer releases the iPhone, one of the first touchscreen smartphones without a keyboard or stylus, setting the standard for future cellular devices.
The collapse of the housing market triggers the Great Recession, which sees the GDP fall by 4.3% and unemployment
Scientists announce the completion of the international Human Genome Project, having sequenced over 90% of the human genome.
Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in Louisiana, causing 1,800 deaths and $160 billion in damages.
Twitter, a social media site that allows users to post messages of no more than 140 characters, launches.
double. Economists mark the recession’s official length as 18 months.
1/20/2009
Barack Obama becomes the 44th president.
2/17/2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act goes into effect, allocating billions of
federal dollars to counter the recession.
10/28/2009
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act expands federal hate crimes legislation to cover violence based on gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability.
1/21/2010
In Citizens United v. FEC, the US Supreme Court rules that restricting political spending of corporations and unions violates the First Amendment.
2/18/2010
WikiLeaks publishes the first of many classified cables sent to the US State Department. Later drops reveal the civilian death toll of the war in Iraq, souring US public opinion on the war effort.
DACA recipient Jairo
3/21/2010
Total population: 308,745,538
Median age: 37.2 years old
Number of people 100 years or older living in the United States: 53,364
Congress passes the Affordable Care Act, expanding Medicaid and making federally subsidized health insurance available.
10/6/2010
Instagram, a photo-sharing social media platform, launches.
3/18/2011
NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft enters orbit around Mercury. Over the next four years, the craft gathers information on the planet’s chemical
Average population per square mile: 87.4 people
Respondents identifying as Hispanic or Latino (any race): 50,477,594 (US), 3,688,455 (Puerto Rico)
8/9/2014
6/26/2015
2/26/2012
composition, magnetic field, and geology.
5/2/2011
11/26/2011
Members of the US Navy SEAL Team Six storm terrorist leader Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound, killing him and four others.
NASA launches the Mars rover Curiosity to investigate the climate, geology, evidence of past microbial life, and potential habitability of the planet.
6/5/2013
temporarily protecting undocumented youth from deportation.
12/14/2012
Teenager Trayvon Martin is shot and killed in Sanford, FL. Details of the shooting spark outrage and lead to protests across the US.
UK newspaper The Guardian publishes leaked National Security Agency documents, revealing widespread US government surveillance of private citizens.
7/31/2012
6/15/2012
President Obama announces the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,
The police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, sparks unrest and civil rights protests nationwide.
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the US Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage on a federal level. Conservative religious groups criticize the decision.
7/5/2015
The San Antonio Missions, made up of five missions sites and other historic properties, are designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.
1/20/2017
A shooter carrying multiple firearms kills 26 children, teachers, and staff during the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, CT.
7/20/2015
The US reestablishes diplomatic relations with Cuba, 54 years after severing ties during the Cold War. The Cuban Embassy reopens in Washington, DC.
8/6/2015
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop opera Hamilton opens on Broadway. It goes on to be nominated for 16 Tony awards.
Michael Phelps wins his 19th Olympic medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, surpassing the previous record to become the most decorated Olympian of all time.
Frosted Flakes cereal box featuring Michael Phelps, 2009
11/2/2016
Donald Trump becomes the 45th president.
9/20/2017
Hurricane Maria sweeps across Puerto Rico, leaving more than 4.7 million residents in need of federal emergency assistance.
10/1/2017
Costume worn by Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton
The Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908.
Chicago Cubs magnet, 2016
10/5/2017
The New York Times publishes an exposé of harassment allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. In response, women nationwide share similar experiences on social media.
4/26/2019
A gunman opens fire at a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring more than 800, the deadliest shooting in US history.
Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of the Marvel Infinity Saga film series, is released.
Director Anthony Russo’s chair from Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
