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Galveston hurricane leaves an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 dead. According to the census, the nation's population numbers nearly 76 million.
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Canal Zone, also called Panama Canal Zone, historic administrative entity in Panama over which the United States exercised jurisdictional rights from 1903 to 1979. It was a strip of land 10 miles (16 km) wide along the Panama Canal, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and bisecting the Isthmus of Panama.
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Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
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Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as the 28th president.
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Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, providing for the direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote rather than by the state legislatures.
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World War I: U.S. enters World War I, declaring war on Germany (April 6, 1917) and Austria-Hungary (Dec. 7, 1917) three years after the conflict began in 1914.
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The first long-distance telephone service, between New York and San Francisco, is demonstrated.
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The armistice ending World War I is signed.
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Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor. It is later repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933.
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Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote.
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Treaty of Versailles, outlining terms for peace at the end of World War I, is rejected by the Senate.