1900-1920

  • McKinley's second inauguration

  • McKinley's is shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz

  • Theodore Roosevelt becomes president

  • U.S. acquires Panama Canal Zone

  • Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk, N.C

  • Theodore Roosevelt's second inauguration.

  • San Francisco earthquake leaves 500 dead or missing and destroys about 4 sq mi of the city

  • William Howard Taft is inaugurated as the 27th president

  • Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as the 28th president.

  • Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified

    Provided for the direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote rather than by the state legislatures.
  • Period: to

    World War I

  • First long distance telephone service, between New York and San Francisco, is demonstrated

  • Wilson's second inauguration

  • U.S. agrees to purchase Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) for $25 million.

  • Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives

  • U.S. enters World War I, declaring war on Germany

  • Worldwide influenza epidemic strikes

  • Armistice ending World War I is signed

  • League of Nations meets for the first time; U.S. is not represented

  • Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified

    Prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor
  • Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote

  • Treaty of Versailles, outlining terms for peace at the end of World War I, is rejected by the Senate