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American history

  • 1492

    The Discovery of America by Columbus

    The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas.
  • The Settlement of Jamestown

    On December 6, 1606, the journey to Virginia began on three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13 they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named after their King, James I. The settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America.
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    The French and Indian war

    The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on their native allies
  • The Boston Tea Party

    The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773 by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend Act as a violation of their rights.
  • The Battle of Lexington and Concord

    In this first battle of the American Revolution, Massachusetts colonists defied British authority, outnumbered and outfought the Redcoats, and embarked on a lengthy war to earn their independence.
  • The Declaration of Independence

    The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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    The Battle of Yorktown

    The Battle of Yorktown proved to be the decisive engagement of the American Revolution. The British surrender forecast the end of British rule in the colonies and the birth of a new nation—the United States of America.
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    The Constitutional Convention

    The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. The United States Constitution that emerged from the convention established a federal government with more specific powers, including those related to conducting relations with foreign governments.
  • The Alien and Sedition Acts

    In 1798, the United States stood on the brink of war with France. The Federalist Party, which advocated for a strong central government, believed that Democratic-Republican criticism of Federalist policies was disloyal and feared that "aliens," or non-citizens, living in the United States would sympathize with the French during a war.
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    The invention of the electric light, telephone, and airplane

    this is with Thomas Alva Edison and the Wright brothers
  • The Louisiana Purchase

    The Louisiana Purchase as the United States spread across the Appalachians, the Mississippi River became an increasingly important conduit for the produce of America’s West (which at that time referred to the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi). Since 1762, Spain had owned the territory of Louisiana, which included 828,000 square miles. The territory made up all or part of fifteen modern U.S. states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
  • The War of 1812

    In 1806 France prohibited all neutral trade with Great Britain and in 1807 Great Britain banned trade between France, her allies, and the Americas. Congress passed an embargo act in 1807 in retaliation, prohibiting U.S. vessels from trading with European nations, and later the Non-Intercourse Acts, aimed solely at France and Britain.
  • The Missouri Compromise

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the inhabitants of that portion of the Missouri territory included within the boundaries hereinafter designated, be, and they are hereby, authorized to form for themselves a constitution and state government and to assume such name as they shall deem proper; and the said state, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union, in all respects whatsoever.
  • Andrew Jackson’s Election

    TThe election of 1828 was arguably one of the most significant in United States history, ushering in the era of political campaigns and paving the way for the solidification of political parties. The previous election, of 1824, had seen John Quincy Adams become president although his opponent Andrew Jackson had earned the most electoral votes.
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    The Trail of Tears

    The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government
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    The Panic of 1937

    Historians have traditionally attributed the Panic of 1837 to a real estate bubble and erratic American banking policy. Most speculation concerned western land opened to settlement after Indian removals, but northeastern forests were among the most overvalued holdings.
  • Invention of the Telegraph

    Long before Samuel F. B. Morse electrically transmitted his famous message "What hath God wrought?" from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, there were signaling systems that enabled people to communicate over distances. Most were visual or "semaphore" systems using flags or lights. In the eighteenth century, such systems used an observer who would decipher a signal from a high tower on a distant hill and then send it on to the next station.
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    Mexican-American War

    On May 13, 1846, the United States Congress declared war on Mexico after a request from President James K. Polk. Then, on May 26, 1848, both sides ratified the peace treaty that ended the conflict.
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    The Compromise of 1850

    The Compromise of 1850 was a series of measures proposed by U.S. Senator Henry Clay and passed by the U.S. Congress to settle several issues connected to slavery and avert the threat of dissolution of the Union.
  • The attack on Fort Sumter

    The attack on Fort Sumter marked the official beginning of the American Civil War—a war that lasted four years, cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans, and freed 3.9 million enslaved people from bondage.
  • The Emancipation Proclamation

    President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
  • 13th, 14th, 15th amendment

    The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all people born in the US. The 15th Amendment gave Black Americans the right to vote.
  • Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

    would NOT let me lookup
  • Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

    to lazy to look up what happened :/
  • Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment

    During the years immediately following the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson clashed repeatedly with the Republican-controlled Congress over reconstruction of the defeated South. Johnson vetoed legislation that Congress passed to protect the rights of those who had been freed from slavery. This clash culminated in the House of Representatives voting, on February 24, 1868, to impeach the president.
  • The invention of the cotton gin

    A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. The fibers are then processed into various cotton goods such as calico, while any undamaged cotton is used largely for textiles like clothing. The separated seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil.
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    The Organization of Standard Oil Trust

    Standard Oil, in full Standard Oil Company and Trust, American company and corporate trust that from 1870 to 1911 was the industrial empire of John D. Rockefeller and associates, controlling almost all oil production, processing, marketing, and transportation in the United States.
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    The Pullman and Homestead Strikes

    the Homestead strike of 1892 and the Pullman Railroad strike of 1894. These two conflicts brought to the surface the deeper issues at work in an age of industrial progress.
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    The Spanish-American War

    The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain’s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere and secured the position of the United States as a Pacific power. U.S. victory in the war produced a peace treaty that compelled the Spanish to relinquish claims on Cuba and to cede sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States.
  • Theodore Roosevelt becomes president

    The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt started on September 14, 1901