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The Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food. crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christo pher Columbus in 1492. During this time, the Spanish settled in South/Central America. The French settled in North America and Canada while the British settled on the East Coast of North America.
Possibly the most dramatic, immediate impact of the Columbian Exchange was the spread of diseases. -
Jamestown was the first permanent, stable English settlement in North America. Because Jamestown was successful, it provided an example of a sustainable colony to other expeditions heading to the New World. Their goal was to make money as the land offered an abundance of resources. Discovery of cash crops like tobacco allowed Virginia to flourish. -
The headright system began in the colony of Jamestown in 1618 as an attempt to solve labor shortages due to the advent of the tobacco economy, which required large plots of land with many workers. Settlers already residing in Virginia were granted 100 acres of land. New settlers who paid their own way to the New World were granted 50 acres of land. Anyone paying for the passage of another was also granted an additional 50 acres per person. -
The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. The major goal of the House of Burgesses was to change the law as imposed by Thomas Dale. Yeardley signed off on the changes which effectively ended martial law in Jamestown and resulted in new found freedoms among the settlers. -
The Salem witch trials and executions came about as the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all of which unfolded in a vacuum of political authority. On March 1, 1692, Salem, Massachusetts authorities interrogated Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and an Indian slave, Tituba, to determine if they indeed practiced witchcraft. So began the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692. -
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. Encouraged people to questiom what they thought or believed. People began to question the government. "Who has the right to rule?" "Where do they obtain that right?" ,etc. -
The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. New light: Brought new ideas. Old light: Wanted to do things the old way. Motivation vs Ritual. -
The colonial governments were to select members of a "Grand Council," while the British Government would appoint a "president General." Together, these two branches of the unified government would regulate colonial-Indian relations and also resolve territorial disputes between the colonies. Suggested unity between colonies for politcal reasons. Suggested the idea of strength in numbers and that each colony wouldnt be able to defent themselves seperately if something were to happen. -
The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American Revolution. The French and Indian War was fought between Great Britain and France and their colonists, as well as Native American tribes. They fought over territories and expansion throughout North America. -
England was still in debt from the French and Indian War and didn't want to start another war. So The Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British at the end of the French and Indian War to appease Native Americans by checking the encroachment of European settlers on their lands. -
Enacted on April 5, 1764, to take effect on September 29, the new Sugar Act cut the duty on foreign molasses from 6 to 3 pence per gallon, retained a high duty on foreign refined sugar, and prohibited the importation of all foreign rum. The act reduced taxes on sugar and molasses to avoid smuggling. The act increased duties on non-British goods shipped to the colonies. -
The Quartering Act stated that Great Britain would house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses. And if the soldiers outnumbered colonial housing, they would be quartered in inns, alehouses, barns, other buildings, etc. This act was created to equally distribute soldiers throughout the community. Colonists resented the Quartering Act as unjust taxation, as it required colonial legislatures to pay to house the troops. -
It taxed newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards. Issued by Britain, the stamps were affixed to documents or packages to show that the tax had been paid. Affected the middle and wealthy class the most. -
This act was passed to assert the authority of the British government to tax its subjects in North America after it repealed the much-hated Stamp Act. After repealing the Stamp Act, Parliament issued the Declaratory Act. The Declaratory Act stated that Parliament had complete control over the governing of the colonies in “all cases whatsoever.” The British were not willing to give up any control to the colonies. -
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. American colonists who had no representation in Parliament saw the Acts as an abuse of power. It was created to help pay the expenses involved in governing the American colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Taxes further fueled the anger regarding the injustice of taxation without representation. -
The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. The event in Boston helped to unite the colonies against Britain. This began a huge step to Revolution. It helped spark the colonists' desire for American independence, while the dead rioters became martyrs for liberty. -
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. was the first significant act of defiance by American colonists. The impact of the Boston Tea Party was enormous ultimately leading to the sparking of the American Revolution which began in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. -
The Intolerable Acts were a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act, a tax measure enacted by Parliament in May 1773.The Intolerable Acts closed the port of Boston so that goods could not be shipped in or out, and it took power away from leaders in Massachusetts. -
The First Continental Congress passed and signed the Continental Association in its Declaration and Resolves, which called for a boycott of British goods to take effect in December 1774. The Continental Congress served as the governing body of the 13 American colonies and later the United States of America during the American Revolution. The First Continental Congress coordinated the patriot colonists' resistance to increasingly harsh and restrictive British rule. -
The British had done such things as raising taxes and increasing the military presence in the colonies. The battle broke out because the British had ordered troops to seize weapons from the town of Concord and to Capture the rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock from Lexington. Neither side expected to actually fight, but in the midst of the confusion a gunshot went off forcing the British to attack. It was the first shot of the American Revolution and the start of the war. -
The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress met inside Independence Hall beginning in May 1775. It was just a month after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the Congress was preparing for war. They met to plan further responses if the British government had not repealed or modified the acts. -
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5th, 1775 to be sent to the King as a last attempt to prevent formal war from being declared. The Petition emphasized their loyalty to the British crown and emphasized their rights as British citizens. The Congress met according to adjournment. King George III formally rejected the petition, because it was an illegal document created by an illegal congress, and then declared the colonies in rebellion. -
America fought the British because of unfair taxes. They fought because they didn't have self-government. When the American colonies formed, they were part of Britain. Britain increased taxes for colonists on things they bought and used every day, like tea.The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in the history of the United States. It marked an official step taken by the American colonies toward independence from British rule under the monarchy of King George III. -
The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments. The need for a stronger Federal government soon became apparent and eventually led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Articles of Confederation consisted of 13 articles that gave powers to a national government, which was led by Congress. -
This treaty, between the American colonies and Great Britain, ended the American Revolution and formally recognized the United States as an independent nation. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there. -
It was a major compromise at the Constitutional Convention that created a two-house legislature, with the Senate having equal representation for all states and the House of Representatives having representation proportional to state populations. But the compromise did more than result in the creation of the Senate, in which each state has two members, and the House of Representatives, where a state's number of seats is proportional to its population. -
Washington's presidency was significant beyond the fact that he was the first president. His actions established a strong central government and helped put in place a plan to fix the problem of the national debt. He established the court system and presidential cabinet. As he stepped down from the presidency, Washington urged Americans to always place the interests of the nation over their political and regional affiliations. -
American Protestant Christians' beliefs changed during the early 19th century in a period known as the Second Great Awakening. Marked by a wave of enthusiastic religious revivals, it set the stage for equally enthusiastic social reform movements, especially abolitionism and temperance.The Second Great Awakening set the stage for equally enthusiastic social reform movements, especially abolitionism and temperance. choose to reject sin and instead to live morally up- standing lives. -
Recently freed from the despotic English monarchy, the American people wanted strong guarantees that the new government would not trample upon their newly won freedoms of speech, press and religion. The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. It spells out Americans' rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual, like freedom of speech, press, and religion. -
A series of laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the Federalist Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. In one of the first tests of freedom of speech, the House passed the Sedition Act, permitting the deportation of anyone deemed a threat or publishing “false, scandalous, or malicious writing” against the government of the United States. -
In this transaction with France, signed on April 30, 1803, the United States purchased 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. For roughly 4 cents an acre, the United States doubled its size, expanding the nation westward. The purchase doubled the size of the United States, greatly strengthened the country materially and strategically, provided a powerful impetus to westward expansion, and confirmed the doctrine of implied powers of the federal Constitution. -
The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. It took effect in February 1815. The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. It took effect in February 1815. -
This legislation admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state at the same time, so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. Henry Clay then skillfully led the forces of compromise, engineering separate votes on the controversial measures. On March 3, 1820, the decisive votes in the House admitted Maine as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and made free soil all western territories north of Missouri's southern border. -
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. Primary causes of the were: the perceived failure of Native American assimilation into Anglo-American culture, continued westward expansion by American settlers, the Jackson administration's pro-removal stance,etc. -
The Whig Party was a political party in the United States during the middle of the 19th century. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System.
Northern anti-slavery Whigs opposed slavery's westward expansion, and this provided enough basis for policy consensus: protecting slavery against abolitionism while opposing its spread to new territories. -
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major depression, which lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down, westward expansion was stalled, unemployment went up, and pessimism abounded. High cotton prices brought about increased land purchases and increased the demand for more slaves. This rapid growth created an economic bubble. In addition, gold, or specie, was the standard for trade with paper currencies only used for convenience. -
Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845 and became the 28th state. Until 1836, Texas had been part of Mexico, but in that year a group of settlers from the United States who lived in Mexican Texas declared independence. His official motivation was to outmaneuver suspected diplomatic efforts by the British government for the emancipation of slaves in Texas, which would undermine slavery in the United States. -
From 1846 to 1848, U.S. and Mexican troops fought against one another in the Mexican-American War. Ultimately, it was a battle for land where Mexico was fighting to keep what they thought was their property and the U.S. desired to retain the disputed land of Texas and obtain more of Mexico's northern lands. It stemmed from the annexation of the Republic of Texas by the U.S. in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande. -
Dred Scott was an enslaved person who accompanied his owner, an army physician, to postings in a free state and free territory before returning with him to the slave state of Missouri. Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued for their freedom in St. Louis Circuit Court. They claimed that they were free due to their residence in a free territory where slavery was prohibited. The odds were in their favor. -
This treaty, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the war between the United States and Mexico. By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including the present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which settled the Mexican-American War, the United States gained more than 500,000 square miles of land, expanding U.S. territory by about one-third. -
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Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. Lincoln's performance made his reputation nationally and by 1860, he was nominated by the Republican party presidential candidate. Lincoln won and became the 16th president of the United States. -
President Lincoln proposed a reconstruction program that would allow Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their male population took loyalty oaths and the states recognized the permanent freedom of formerly enslaved people. House and Senate rejected the plan, fearing that it was too lenient on the South and didn't guarantee rights beyond freedom for slaves. This ignited tensions between Lincoln and Congress. The image of President Abraham Lincoln. -
On April 12, 1861, forces from the Confederate States of America attacked the United States military garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Less than two days later, the fort surrendered. No one was killed. The battle, however, started the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history -
The first land battle of the Civil War was fought on July 21, 1861. Southerners called it the Battle of Manassas, after the closest town. Northerners called it Bull Run, after a stream running through the battlefield.Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Less than 34 hours later, Union forces surrendered. Traditionally, this event has been used to mark the beginning of the Civil War. -
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. The Proclamation paved the way for the permanent abolition of slavery in the United States. -
The Union had won the Battle of Gettysburg. Though the cautious Meade would be criticized for not pursuing the enemy after Gettysburg, the battle was a crushing defeat for the Confederacy. Union casualties in the battle numbered 23,000, while the Confederates had lost some 28,000 men–more than a third of Lee's army. The Union won. -
On March 3, 1865, Congress passed “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees” to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed African Americans. The Bureau was responsible for the supervision and management of all matters relating to the refugees and freedmen and lands abandoned or seized during the Civil War, duties previously shared by military commanders and US Treasury Department officials. -
As the war drew to a close with the fall of Richmond on April 3, 1865, and Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, there were Southern sympathizers who believed that the Confederacy could be restored. John Wilkes Booth held that belief, and it was the motive behind his plot to murder President Abraham Lincoln. -
The acts created five military districts in the seceded states (excepting Tennessee, which had already been readmitted). They also required former Confederate states to submit new constitutions to Congress for approval, to extend voting rights to all men, and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. -
The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election; through it Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House on the understanding that he would remove the federal troops from South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era. -
The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. There was growth of government which led to the corruption. Urbanization led to tenement housing, unemployment, crime, and unsanitary conditions. This impacted the lower class the most as they worked 24/7 and didn't have money to assert change. -
Theodore Rossevelt was Vice President under William Mckinley but took office as a President due to Mckinley's assasination. He was known for using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to break up "bad trusts." He also created National Parks and the PFDA. He vigorously promoted the conservation movement, emphasizing efficient use of natural resources. He dramatically expanded the system of national parks and national forests. -
Roosevelt invites represantatives from Russia and Japan to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the war. The treaty is signed. The Treaty ultimately gave Japan control of Korea and much of South Manchuria, including Port Arthur and the railway that connected it with the rest of the region, along with the southern half of Sakhalin Island; Russian power was curtailed in the region, but it was not required to pay Japan's war costs. -
The Model T was introduced to the world in 1908. Henry Ford wanted the Model T to be affordable, simple to operate, and durable. The vehicle was one of the first mass production vehicles, allowing Ford to achieve his aim of manufacturing the universal car. A boom in automobile imdustry leads to expansion and opportunities in other industries such as steel, glass, oil, and rubber. -
The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow. The Great Migration is often broken into two phases, coinciding with the participation and effects of the United States in both World Wars. With large numbers of white men joining the military, African Amercians from the south made and escape to the north to start sharecropping and find opportunity. -
Wilson pledged to break up big trusts, but unlike Roosevelt, saw little distinction between good/bad trusts. He passed the Clayford Act which strengthened the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. He also created the Federal Reserve which re-organized the country's banking system. He passed the Underwood Tariff bill which lowered tariffs and instituted the nations first income tax under the 16th Amendment. -
On May 7, 1915, the German submarine (U-boat) U-20 torpedoed and sank the Lusitania, a swift-moving British cruise liner traveling from New York to Liverpool, England. Of the 1,959 men, women, and children on board, 1,195 perished, including 123 Americans. There was talk that the torpedoing was a planned sneak attack, that the Germans had targeted the Lusitania to hurt the British and American people. Soon, the ship became associated with evil and malice. -
This telegram, written by German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann, is a coded message sent to Mexico, proposing a military alliance against the United States. British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. -
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic,and its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against America. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary. -
At the outset of the war, America's army was small and ill prepared. President Wilson signed the Selective Service Act in order to grow the military and compel service in World War 1. The Selective Service Act allowed the Federal government to raise up an army to go fight in war- a draft, all males aged 21 to 30 were required to register for military service. -
he Battle of Cantigny, fought May 28, 1918 was the first major American battle and offensive of World War I. The U.S. 1st Division, the most experienced of the five American divisions then in France and in reserve for the French Army near the village of Cantigny, was selected for the attack. -
This first global conflict had claimed from 9 million to 13 million lives and caused unprecedented damage. Germany had formally surrendered on November 11, 1918, and all nations had agreed to stop fighting while the terms of peace were negotiated. All sides want an end to the war but the trench warfare means that traditional victory or defeat is not possible. Barely hanging on, Germany agrees to an Amristice, or temporary ceasefire, while a permanent treaty is hammered out. -
Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change in the Constitution: guaranteeing women the right to vote. Women viewed alcohol as the root of the social ills like abuse, unemployment, gambling, prostitution, and disease. The temperance movement was the nationwide attempt to curb and eliminate women's suffrage. -
The National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, defined an intoxicating beverage as anything that contained more than one half of one percent alcohol. By contrast, Canadian prohibition laws set the limit at 2.5 percent. The 18th Amendment gets passed outlawing the manufacture, sale, distribution, or importation of alcohol nation wide. -
European powers did not like the 14 points, they wanted something that would punish Germany. They limited the German army to 100,000 men, Navy to 6 warships, no planes or submarines, they wre to pay 33 Billion in war reparations, couldn't place troops in Rhineland, had to give back gained land, and couldn't unite iwht other Germanic people. The treaty also creates the Legaue of Nations however, the U.S does not sign the treaty or join the LON. -
Many blacks in the south moved north during the Great War. The newly established black community saw a flourishing of black artistic expression. Black journalists, poets, musicians and artists created a pride in being black and wrote about the experience of being black. It was a period of rich cross-disciplinary artistic and cultural activity among African Americans between the end of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression and lead up to World War II. -
Radio broadcasting was the cheapest form of entertainment, and it provided the public with far better entertainment than most people were accustomed to. As a result, its popularity grew rapidly in the late 1920s.
The power of radio and the world of sports. After being introduced during World War I, radios became a common feature in American homes of the 1920s. Stations developed and broadcasted news, serial stories, and political speeches. -
The Great War created a great sense of patriots, Anyone seen as unpatriotic or standing against American values was ostricized and feared. With the knowledge of the Russian Revolution, there is a rising tide of hatred against communism known as The Red Scare. Widespread fear of a potential rise of communism, anarchism or other leftist ideologies by a society. The term is often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States referred by this name. -
he Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. Only 2% of the number of eop;e from that country could come in the U.S. -
A town in Tennesse banned the teaching of evolution. A local science teacher John Schopes taught it anyayws and was charged and brought to trial. Scopes was found guilty, however the case heightened tensions and sparked a debate that persists even today. -
After WW1, the U.S is a creditor nation. Providing loans to countries around the world who were already experiecneing a depression and couldn't afford to pay us back. Ballooning stock market leading to too much speculation and borrowing on margin. People began to run up large personal debts in order to have the newest technology. Stock market crashes, banks lacked money, people lost savings, debts were called in, no cash, production stopped, workers fired, no profits, etc. -
In Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas and parts of other states experiences the economic and environmental disaster known as the Dust Bowl. Economic depression coupled with extended drought, unusually high temperatures, poor agricultural practices and the resulting wind erosion all contributed to making the Dust Bowl. Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought. -
World War One veterans were promised a bonus for their service but they weren't due to recieve it till 1945.
In May 1932, jobless WWI veterans organized a group called the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces” (BEF) to march on Washington, DC. Suffering and desperate, the BEF's goal was to get the bonus payment now, when they really needed the money. Military evicted them from D.C and burned the camp (many veterans were injured). -
The new Deal is amed at creating new agencies and programs to protect people from economic disaster and provide relief or temporary work. In Roosevelt's first 100 days he acts descisively to increase government spending and creates many similar programs. The New Deal programs were known as the three "Rs"; Roosevelt believed that together Relief, Reform, and Recovery could bring economic stability to the nation. -
This act was a safety net for all Americans. The Social Security Act established two types of provisions for old-age security: (1) Federal aid to the States to enable them to provide cash pensions to their needy aged, and (2) a system of Federal old-age benefits for retired workers. Today, about 179 million people work and pay Social Security taxes and over 65 million people receive monthly Social Security benefits. -
The Japanese intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Around 2,000 servicemen killed, 68 civilians killed, 1,178 wounded. 18 battleships, 3 light cruisers, 3 destroyers, and 4 other vessels were damaged. -
Rnaking behind the USSR, Britain and Germany in 1939, the US became the top aircraft producer in the world by 1941. By war's end, the US had produced 86,500 more aircraft than Germany, Italy, and Japan combined.
Every American automaker turned its workforce and facilities to military production during World War II. But no project captured the public's imagination like Willow Run, where Ford Motor Company built one B-24 Liberator airplane every 63 minutes. -
It was the largest invasion ever assembled, before or since, landed 156,000 Allied troops by sea and air on five beachheads in Normandy, France. D-Day was the start of Allied operations which would ultimately liberate Western Europe, defeat Nazi Germany and end the Second World War. In other words, the D in D-Day merely stands for Day. This coded designation was used for the day of any important invasion or military operation. -
Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, this act, also known as the G.I. Bill, provided World War II veterans with funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. It put higher education within the reach of millions of veterans of WWII and later military conflicts. The Veterans Administration (VA) was responsible for carrying out the law's key provisions: education and training, loan guaranty for homes, farms or businesses, and unemployment pay. -
The Cold War was a struggle for world dominance between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. At the Yalta Conference, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France agreed to split Germany into four zones of occupation after the war. The British wanted to maintain their empire, the Soviets wished to obtain more land and to strengthen conquests and the Americans wanted to insure the Soviet's entry into the Pacific war and discuss postwar settlement. -
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address. -
Hollywood Ten, in U.S. history, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947, refused to answer questions regarding their possible communist affiliations, and, after spending time in prison for contempt of Congress, were mostly blacklisted by the Hollywood studios.
They were investigated by HUAC and were blacklisted and later sent to jail. -
Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house without electricity until he was 14. Before 1947, only a few thousand American homes owned television sets. Just five years later, that number jumped to 12 million. By 1955, half of American homes had a TV set. -
President Truman asked Congress for $400 million in aid plus US troops/advisors to help both Greece and Turkey fights back the Communist threat. The Truman Doctrine, also known as the policy of containment, was President Harry Truman's foreign policy that the US would provide political, military, and economic aid to democratic countries under the threat of communist influences in order to prevent the expansion of communism. -
“Operation Vittles,” better known as the Berlin Airlift, began when the Soviet Union blockaded the western zone of Berlin. For 18 months, Allied forces flew round-the-clock, bringing 2.3 million tons of supplies to Berlin by air. Truman decided that we were going to hold on to West Berlin and chose an airlift from the options presented to him. Airlift is ended on May of 1949 and Russians surrender the blockade. -
The USSR imposed a complete blockade on railway, road, and canal traffic leading to West Berlin from the allied German zone. No supplies of any type including food, fuel, etc. He wanted to starve the people. Not only did the blockade turn out to be totally ineffective, it ended up backfiring on the Soviets in other ways. It provoked genuine fears of war in the West. And instead of preventing the establishment of an independent West Germany, it accelerated the Allies plans to set up the state. -
USSR successfully tests their own atomic bomb. This leads to widespread fear of nuclear attack by the USSR. the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first successful weapon test at the Semipalatinsk-21 in Kazakhstan. Stalin alongside Soviet political officials and scientists were elated at the successful test. -
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. -
The term "baby boom" is often used to refer specifically to the post–World War II (1946–1964) baby boom in the United States and Europe. In the US the number of annual births exceeded 2 per 100 women (or approximately 1% of the total population size). An estimated 78.3 million Americans were born during this period. Boomers also influenced the economy as a core marketing demographic for products tied to their age group, from toys to records. -
On June 27, 1950, the United States officially entered the Korean War. The U.S. supported the Republic of Korea (South Korea), in repelling an invasion from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The Korean War was a conflict that emerged after World War II. America wanted not just to contain communism they also wanted to prevent the domino effect. Truman was worried that if Korea fell, the next country to fall would be Japan, which was very important for American trade. -
In Montgomery, Alabama, on Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. She challenges the Jim Crow laws by refusing to give up her seat. She is arrested, and black leaders organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 40,000 blacks in Montgomery participate in the boycott which lasts 382 days. -
This act authorized the building of highways throughout the nation, which would be the biggest public works project in the nation's history. Popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 established an interstate highway system in the United States. Eisenhower wrote in his presidential memoirs, "During World War II, I had seen the superlative system of German autobahn national highways -
King, a pastor, gets his start as a civil rights leader in the Montgomenry bus boycotts. In 1957 he helps found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with other black Christian leaders. King and the SCLC employ civil disobedience tactics of Gandhi which gets television coverge and leads to public sympathy. His adoption of nonviolent resistance to achieve equal rights for Black Americans earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. -
By law blacks could go to white public schools but they were too fearful of the treatment they would recieve. When the Little Rock 9 enrolled in the highschool, Governer Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to deny their entrance. Whites picketed and protested, threatened lynchings and threatened not to let their kids to school. Eisenhower ordered the school open and ordered the troops of the 101st Airborne division into Little Rock to make sure the little Rock 9 made it school. -
Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Over 1,000 sutdents volunteers both white and black began taking rides through the south to test new laws outlawing segregation in bus and railway stations. Several groups of rides are viciously attacked and buses bombed by mobs of angry white ractics. -
Hundred of school kids stage a school "walk-out" to participate in a march in downtown Birmingham. As they approached police lines, hundreds were arrested and carried off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. "Bull" Connor stops the marches by ordering the corwds sprayed with fire hoses and releasing dogs on them. The march is televised and cuase JFK to publicly support the Civil Righs movement. -
The SCLC planned a march and rally on Washington D.C with support from the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE. Over 250,000 people are in attendance. MLK jr delivers his famous "I have a dream speech." March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress. -
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The law bans discrimination in local, state, and national elections and polling places. Bans literacy testing, intimidation, and physical violence. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. This is a black eye for America. When Vietnam soldiers came home, they were greeted with angry protestors. -
The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's persistent attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, D.C., Watergate Office Building. A scandal arising from the Nixon administration's attempt to cover up its involvement in the 1972 break in at the Democratic national committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex.