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The Magna Carta document is adopted in England, guaranteeing liberties to the English people, and proclaiming basic rights and procedures which later become the foundation stone of modern democracy.
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New Scottish rebellion against English rule led by Robert the Bruce. Robert is crowned King of Scotland at Scone, rules until 1329. This ends the ten-year interregnum in Scotland.
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John of Gaunt leads an expensive and unsuccessful military expedition to Spain in an effort to win the crown of Castile, which he claims by right of marriage to his second wife. He is eventually beaten in 1388.
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Christopher Columbus, financed by Spain, makes the first of four voyages to the New World. He lands in the Bahamas.
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The name "America" is first used in a geography book referring to the New World with Amerigo Vespucci getting credit for the discovery of the continent.
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The Mayflower lands at Cape Cod, Massachusetts on November 9 with 101 colonists. On November 11, the Mayflower Compact, signed by the 41 men, establishes a form of local government in which the colonists agree to abide by majority rule and to cooperate for the general good of the colony. The Mayflower Compact sets a precedent for other colonies as they set up governments
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John Winthrop leads a group of 900 Puritan colonists to Massachusetts Bay in March. He will serve as the first governor. Boston is officially established in September, and serves as the site of Winthrop's government
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The Fall of Quebec - Battle of the "Plains of Abraham" - British defeat French, thus gaining control of Canada
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The Treaty of Paris is signed by the United States and Great Britain. Congress will ratify the treaty on January 14, 1784.
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Thomas Jefferson won the election of 1800, which was finally resolved in the U.S. House of Representatives
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The U.S. Military Academy opened at West Point, New York.
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Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis, completing their expedition to the Pacific.
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Legendary newspaper editor Horace Greeley was born in Amherst, New Hampshire.
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British troops landed in Maryland, marched to Washington, D.C., and burned the U.S. Capitol and the Executive Mansion (which would later be called the White House).
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Abolitionist author Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on a plantation in Maryland.
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A devastating hurricane struck New York City, and the study of its path would lead to the understanding of rotating storms.
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The poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore was published in a newspaper in Troy, New York.
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John Quincy Adams was inaugurated as president of the United States.
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A slave rebellion led by Nat Turner broke out in Virginia.
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Andrew Jackson was elected to his second term as president of the United States.
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William Clark, who with Meriwether Lewis had led the Lewis and Clark Expedition, died in St. Louis, Missouri, at the age of 68.
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Penny postage was introduced in Britain
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he U.S. Congress established a uniform date for federal elections: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
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James Marshall, a mechanic at John Sutter's sawmill in northern California, recognized some unusual nuggets, and his discovery would set off the California Gold Rush.
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The Compromise of 1850 is introduced in the US Congress. The legislation would eventually pass and be highly controversial, but it essentially delayed the Civil War by a decade.
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James Buchanan in inaugurated as President of the United States. He becomes very ill at his own inauguration, raising questions in the press about whether he was poisoned in a failed assassination attempt.
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death of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the brilliant British engineer. At the time of his death his enormous steel ship The Great Eastern was still unfinished.
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Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, gave a speech at Cooper Union in New York City. Lincoln delivered a forceful and well-reasoned argument against the spread of slavery, and became an overnight star and a leading candidate for the upcoming presidential election.
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President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
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The annual parade for St. Patrick's Day in New York City is marred by violent clashes. In the following years the tone of the parade is changed and it becomes a symbol of the emerging political power of the New York Irish.
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Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station in New York City begins generating electricy to supply 400 street lamps and 85 customers with electrical power.
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The first commemoration of Labor Day was held in New York City when 10,000 workers held a march.
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The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor from France.
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The Haymarket Riot in Chicago took place when a bomb was thrown into a mass meeting called to show support for striking workers.
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The Johnstown Flood occurred in Pennsylvania when a poorly constructed dam burst.
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Wyoming and Idaho are admitted as the 43rd and 44th states.
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Congress passes the first graduated income tax. The U.S. Supreme Court declares the "direct tax" unconstitutional the following year
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Ex-slave and civil rights advocate Frederick Douglass dies..
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The last great North American "Gold Rush" begins on April 6, 1896 when gold is discovered in the Yukon District of Canada.
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Fighting erupts between the United States and Philippine revolutionary forces on February 4, 1899. The "Philippine Insurrection" would officially end on July 4, 1902.
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1901
Queen Victoria dies, and is succeeded by her son, Edward VII. As President McKinley begins second term, he is shot fatally by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Theodore Roosevelt sworn in as successor. -
1901
Queen Victoria dies, and is succeeded by her son, Edward VII. As President McKinley begins second term, he is shot fatally by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Theodore Roosevelt sworn in as successor. -
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Einstein Proposes His Theory of Relativity
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At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a large earthquake hit San Francisco
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At 7:14 a.m. on June 30, 1908, a giant explosion shook central Siberia. Witnesses close to the event described seeing a fireball in the sky, as bright and hot as another sun.
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Boy Scouts was established in the US!
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On August 21, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world, was stolen right off the wall of the Louvre. The crime was inconceivable and the police had no leads.
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Titanic hit iceberg on April 14, 1912 (11:40 p.m.) and sank on April 15, 1912 (2:20 a.m.)
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The spark that started World War I was the assassination of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The assassination occurred on June 28, 1914 while Ferdinand was visiting the city of Sarajevo in the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
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The Versailles Treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, was the peace settlement between Germany and the Allied Powers that officially ended World War I.
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On September 5, 1921, at a raucous Hollywood party, Virginia Rappe, a young starlet, became severely ill and died four days later. The newspapers claimed that popular silent-screen comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had raped her and killed her with his weight. There was little evidence against Arbuckle, but the public was quick to blame him.
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On November 4, 1922, while clearing away some ancient huts, one of Howard Carter's workmen found a hidden step near the base of the tomb of Rameses VI. Though he hoped it led to an ancient, royal tomb, it could just as easily have been a royal cache or, much worse, empty - pilfered in antiquity. But that was not to be. Carter had discovered not just an unknown ancient Egyptian tomb, but one that had lain nearly undisturbed for over 3,000 years. Pharoah Tutankhamun, the boy king, was found withi
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With the first publication of the children's book Winnie-the-Pooh on October 14, 1926, the world was introduced to some of the most popular fictional characters of the twentieth century - Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore.
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it wasn't until 1928 that Walter Diemer happened upon just the right gum recipe to make the very first bubble gum, a special type of chewing gum that allows the chewer to make bubbles.
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After nearly a decade of optimism and prosperity, the United States was thrown into despair on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed and the official beginning of the Great Depression.
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On February 18, 1930, Clyde W. Tombaugh, an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. For over seven decades, Pluto was considered the ninth planet of our solar system.
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On the evening of March 1, 1932, famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife put their 20-month-old baby, Charles (“Charlie”) Augustus Lindbergh Jr., to bed in his upstairs nursery. However, when Charlie’s nurse went to check on him at 10 pm, he was gone; someone had kidnapped him.
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When the Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931, it was the tallest building in the world - standing at 1,250 feet tall.
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Auschwitz might be the most famous camp in the Nazi system of terror, but it was not the first. The first concentration camp was Dachau, established on March 20, 1933 in the southern German town of the same name (10 miles northwest of Munich).
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Famed fugitives Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are killed in a police ambush near Sailes, Louisiana. A contingent of officers from Texas and Louisiana set up along the highway, waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to appear, and then unloaded a two-minute fusillade of 167 bullets at their car, killing the criminal couple.
