American History Chapters 18-21 By divaeeva 1855 Bessemer converter process allows steel to be made quickly and inexpensively 1858 Construction of New York’s Central Park begins 1859 First oil well is struck in Titusville, Pennsylvania 1859 Comstock Lode is discovered 1859 Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is published 1862 Congress passes the Homestead Act 1864 Sand Creek Massacre 1869 First transcontinental railroad is completed at Promontory, Utah 1873 Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents his telephone 1876 Thomas A. Edison makes the first successful incandescent lightbulb 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn 1877 Great Railroad Strike 1877 With the Compromise of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes becomes president and Reconstruction comes to an end 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated president 1877 Supreme Court issues Munn v. Illinois decision 1881 James A. Garfield is assassinated 1882 John D. Rockefeller organizes the Standard Oil Trust 1882 Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act 1883 Congress passes the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act 1886 In the Haymarket incident, a bomb set off at a Chicago labor rally kills and wounds police officers 1886 American Federation of Labor is organized 1886 Surrender of Geronimo marks the end of the Indian wars 1886 Supreme Court issues Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois decision 1887 Congress passes the Severalty Act 1887 Interstate Commerce Commission is created 1889 Otis Elevator Company installs the first electric elevator 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee 1890 Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the McKinley Tariff 1890 Mississippi Plan resegregates public facilities by race 1891 Basketball is invented 1892 Homestead Strike 1892 Ellis Island, a federal center for processing immigrants, opens 1892 People’s party drafts its Omaha platform 1893 Frederick J. Turner’s “frontier thesis” 1893 Economic depression affects a substantial proportion of the population 1894 Pullman Strike 1894 Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed 1895 Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromise speech 1895 Cuban insurrection breaks out against Spanish rule 1896 Supreme Court issues Plessy v. Ferguson decision 1898 War of 1898 1898 U.S. battleship Maine explodes in Havana Harbor 1898 United States annexes Hawaii 1899 U.S. Senate ratifies the Treaty of Paris, ending the War of 1898 Period: 1899 to 1902 Filipino insurgents resist U.S. domination 1900 Baseball’s National League is formed 1900 Army Yellow Fever Commission confirms the cause of yellow fever 1900 International alliance quells the Boxer Rebellion 1901 J. Pierpont Morgan creates the U.S. Steel Corporation 1903 Panamanians revolt against Colombia 1905 Russo-Japanese War 1907 Great White Fleet circumnavigates the globe in a demonstration of America’s rise to world-power status 1909 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is created 1914 Panama Canal opens