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Alexander grand bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention: the telephone. -
In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. For the first time, federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities. -
American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies. -
The Haymarket affair was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after police killed one and injured several workers. -
Approved on February 4, 1887, the Interstate Commerce Act created an Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the conduct of the railroad industry. With this act, the railroads became the first industry subject to Federal regulation. -
The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the political realignment of 1896 and the presidency of William McKinley. -
In 1895, President Grover Cleveland invoked the Monroe Doctrine to prevent British intervention in Venezuela. -
By the 1890s, the transportation infrastructure of downtown Boston – a maze of narrow, winding streets laid out, in some cases, along Colonial cow paths – proved completely inadequate for the needs of a modern, bustling metropolis.
A streetcar subway was selected as the best solution, and construction began in March 1895. -
The Spanish–American War was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. -
William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, six months into his second term. -
At 10:35 a.m. on December 17, 1903, Orville Wright flew the Flyer for 12 seconds over 120 feet of the ground. This flight, conducted on Kill Devil Hill just outside of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was the very first flight by a manned, controlled, heavier-than-air aircraft that flew under its own power. -
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans -
The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. -
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. -
The Panama Canal a 48-mile waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Caribbean Sea was completed after many difficult years of development. -
The RMS Lusitania was a UK-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland -
The American entry into World War I came in April 1917, more than two and a half years after the war began in Europe. Apart from an Anglophile element urging early support for the British and an anti-Tsarist element sympathizing with Germany's war against Russia, American public opinion had generally reflected a desire to stay out of the war: -
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding -
On January 25, 1924, the first Winter Olympics take off in style at Chamonix in the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as 12 other events involving a total of six sports. The “International Winter Sports Week,” as it was known, was a great success, and in 1928 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially designated the Winter Games -
Amelia Earhart becomes the first women to fly Across the Atlantic. -
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. -
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945 -
Babe Ruth retires from baseball. -
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers.