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The California Gold Rush started after James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill near Colma, California. His discovery triggered a massive influx of more than 300,000 fortune-seekers-nicknamed "49ers"- that quickly reshaped the area.Although the rush tapered off by about 1855, it left lasting effects, including California's admission as a state, rapid urban growth in places such as San Francisco, and major environmental and social changes. -
Congress Enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, overriding President Andrew Johnson;s veto. It marked Congress's first major civil right's legislation and declared that everyone born in the United States is a citizen with equal rights, including property ownership and equal protection under the law. -
The First Transcontinental Railroad was was finished at Promontory Summit in Utah, where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific tracks met. The event is best known for the ceremonial placement of the " GoldenSpike" by Cental Pacific president Leland Stanford, symbolically joining the lines and cutting cross-country travel from several months to roughly one week. -
On January 10, 1870, John D. Rockefeller and his partners-among them his brother William- incorporated the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in Cleveland as a joint-stock firm to consolidate and dominate the oil-refining industry. -
The fifteenth Amendment forbade states from denying voting rights because of race, color, or past enslavement. After enough states ratified it, the Secretary of Sate formally certified the amendment on March 30, 1870. It became a cornerstone of Reconstruction. Still, many Southern States later imposed barriers such as poll taxes and literacy tests to suppress voters until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 curtailed these practices. -
The novel THE Glided Age: A Tale of Today, co-written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, was first released. It offers a satirical critique of the corruption and materialism in the United Sates agter the Civil War-a time that later came to be called the "Glided Age," a phrase Twain himself introduced. -
Alexander Graham recived the patent for an invention he called "Improvement in Telegraphy." He submitted his application only hours before Elisha Gray filed a similar one the same day, a timing that later fueled controversy over the invention. -
Congress enacted the Pendleton Act- also called the Civil Service Act, to replace the spoils system with a merit-based process for federal employment. Thee law created the Civil Service Commission, required competitive examinations for government jobs, and prohibited soliciting political contributions from federal workers. Public outrage after President James A. Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed office seeker helped spur passage of the return. -
Chicago erected the Home Insurance Building- often considered the first skyscraper-designed by architect William Le Baron Jenney. Its groundbreaking use of a steel girder framework carried the building's load, enabling greater height and improved fire resistance compared to traditional masonry. This innovation laid the foundation for later skyscrapers and marked a major milestone in modern architecture. -
Frank Sprague developed the first practical, large-scale electric street railway, laying the groundwork for today's electric trolleys. His sysstem was built for the Richmond Union Passenger Railway in Richmond, Virginia, and began regular service in February 1888. Sprague's major advances were a workable electric motor and an overhead-wire power supply, which made the operation efficient and dependable. -
Passed in the United States, the Pure Food and Drug Act was signedby President Theodore Roosevelt. The law banned the interstate shipment of adulterated or falsely labeled foods and medicines and laid the foundation for what becamethe Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It emerged in response to public outrage sparked by investigative reporting, especially Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which revealedfilthy conditions in the meat packing industry. -
After losing the Republican presidential nomination to incumbent William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt created the Progressive Party, popularly called the Bull Moose Party. Formed when Roosevelt and other progressive split from the Republican Party, the new organization championed reforms such as women's suffrage, an eight-hour workday, and a range of labor and industrial protections. -
The German submarine U-20 torpedoed and sank the British liner RMS Lusitania in the Atlantic near Ireland. The ship was en route from New York to Liverpool. The disaster killed 1,198 people, among them 128 Americans. Beforehand, Germany had cautioned that vessels sailing under the British flag were in a declared war zone and could be attacked. -
Herbert Hoover won the U.S. presidency by a landslide over Democrat Al Smith. The Republican candidate benefited from the prosperity of the 1920s, which boosted his popularity. He was sworn in as the 31st president on March 4, 1929, and served a single term, ending in 1933. -
Hoovers inauguration fueled expectations that the economy would keep expanding.
Fewer than eight months after Hoover took office, the market collapsed, reaching its worst day on "Black Tuesday," October 29, 1929.
The crash set off the Great Depression, a prolonged era of severe economic distress throughout the 1930s. It revealed deep structural flaws in the economy and resulted in mass unemployment, widespread bank failures, and growing poverty. -
The Scottsboro Boys cases began with the first trial of Haywood Patterson. Nine black teenagers were wrongly accused of raping two white women, triggering years of highly publicized, racially biased court battles. Notable lawyers, including Samuel Leibowitz, became involved as the cases moved through convictions, reversals, and retrials, eventually ending in pardons. -
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of conspiring to share U.S. atomic secrets with the Soviet Union and were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. -
The Montgomery bus boycott was a landmark political and social protest challenging racial segregation on Montgomery, Alabama's public buses. Running for 381 days- from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956-it became a cornerstone event of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. -
Congress approved the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law. This landmark, measure, a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement, aimed to remove state and local legal obstacles that had long prevented African Americans and other minority groups from exercising the voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Members of the ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed student demonstrators at kent State University. The incident-known as the Kent State Massacre- left four students dead and nine wounded during protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. incursion into Cambodia. In just 13 seconds, the Guardsmen discharged 67 rounds, sparking nationwide outrage and profoundly shaping student activism and public trust in government.