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1492
Columbian exchange started
The "Columbian Exchange" describes the interchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the Americas following Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean in 1492. -
Jun 7, 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas signed
Treaty of Tordesillas, (June 7, 1494), agreement between Spain and Portugal aimed at settling conflicts over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus and other late 15th-century voyagers. -
Treaty of London signed
Treaty of London (1604) The Treaty of London, signed on 18 August O.S. (28 August N.S.) 1604, concluded the nineteen-year Anglo-Spanish War. The negotiations took place at Somerset House in London and are sometimes known as the Somerset House Conference. -
House of Burgesses founded
The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first legislative assembly of elected representatives in North America. -
King Philip's war started
King Philip's War was an armed conflict between American Indian inhabitants of New England and English colonists and their Indian allies in 1675–78. -
Bacon's Rebellion started
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. -
Leisler's Rebellion started
Leisler's Rebellion was an uprising in late 17th century colonial New York in which German American merchant and militia captain Jacob Leisler seized control of the colony's south and ruled it from 1689 to 1691. -
Salem Witch Trails started
The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. -
Stono Rebellion started
The Stono Rebellion was a slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, with 42-47 whites and 44 blacks -
French and Indian war started
The French and Indian War comprised the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War of 1756–63. It pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France. -
American Revolution started
The American Revolution was a colonial revolt that took place between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America. -
Stamp act was passed
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. -
Intolerable Acts inacted
The series of acts British Parliament passed in 1774 in reaction to the Boston Tea Party came to be known in the American colonies as the Intolerable Acts. -
Declaration Of Independence approved
First American constitution that established the United States as a loose confederation of states under a weak national Congress, which was not granted the power to regulate commerce or collect taxes. The Articles were replaced by a more efficient Constitution in 1789. -
Articles of Confederation adopted
First American constitution that established the United States as a loose confederation of states under a weak national Congress, which was not granted the power to regulate commerce or collect taxes. The Articles were replaced by a more efficient Constitution in 1789. -
Bill of Rights added to the constitution
Within six months of the time the amendments–the Bill of Rights–had been submitted to the states, nine had ratified them. Two more states were needed; Virginia's ratification, on December 15, 1791, made the Bill of Rights part of the Constitution. -
Washington's Farewell Address
In the 32-page handwritten address, Washington urged Americans to avoid excessive political party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances with other nations. The address was printed in Philadelphia's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796. -
Lewis and Clark expedition started
The Lewis and Clark Expedition from May 1804 to September 1806, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States. -
War of 1812 ended
In June 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain in reaction to three issues: the British economic blockade of France, the induction of thousands of neutral American seamen into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier. -
McCulloch vs Maryland
The state of Maryland taxed banknotes produced by the Bank of the United States, claiming that the Bank was unconstitutional. Using IMPLIED POWERS, Marshall countered that the Bank was constitutional and ruled that Maryland was forbidden from taxing the Bank -
Monroe Doctrine enforced
The Monroe Doctrine was articulated in President James Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States' sphere of interest. -
Indian removal act
Authorized Andrew Jackson to negotiate land-exchange treaties with tribes living east of the Mississippi. The treaties acted under this act's provisions paved the way for the emigration of natives. -
Mexican-American war started
The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War and in Mexico the American intervention in Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. -
Fugitive Slave Act Passed
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. -
Kansas-Nebraska act passed
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Dred Scott vs Sandford issued
The Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford was issued on March 6, 1857. Delivered by Chief Justice Roger Taney, this opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. -
South seceded from the Union
With the election in 1860 of Abraham Lincoln, who ran on a message of containing slavery to where it currently existed, and the success of the Republican Party to which he belonged – the first entirely regional party in US history – in that election, South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, the first state to ever. -
Civil War started
The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries at Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.” -
Emancipation Proclamation signed
Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd, 1862. It stipulated that if the Southern states did not cease their rebellion by January 1st, 1863, then Proclamation would go into effect. -
Reconstruction began
The period after the Civil War, 1865 - 1877, was called the Reconstruction period. Abraham Lincoln started planning for the reconstruction of the South during the Civil War as Union soldiers occupied huge areas of the South. -
13th amendment passed
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States. The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. -
Civil war ended
The most often cited official date of the end of the civil war is April 9, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House. -
the KKK was founded
a group of Confederate veterans convenes to form a secret society that they christen the “Ku Klux Klan.” The KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government’s progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially policies that elevated the rights of the local African American population. -
Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed
The Civil Rights Act (1866) was passed by Congress on 9th April 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act declared that all persons born in the United States were now citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition. -
transcontinental railroad finished
On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, signaling the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad had long been a dream for people living in the American West. -
Lightbulb invented
The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was not “invented” in the traditional sense in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison, although he could be said to have created the first commercially practical incandescent light -
Plessy vs Ferguson case started
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". -
WWI starts
World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. -
The Great Migration began
The Great Migration, or the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, had a huge impact on urban life in the United States. -
19th amendment passed
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote -
18th amendment completed
The ratification of the 18th Amendment was completed on January 16th, 1919 and would take effect on January 17th, 1920. It is important to note that the 18th Amendment did not prohibit the consumption of alcohol, but rather simply the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. -
The great depression starts
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, originating in the United States -
second new deal launched
Roosevelt launched a second, more aggressive series of federal programs, sometimes called the Second New Deal. In April, he created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide jobs for unemployed people -
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native American nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. -
Internment of Japanese Americans started
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast. -
WWII ends
World War 2 ended with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. On 8 May 1945, the Allies accepted Germany's surrender, about a week after Adolf Hitler had committed suicide. VE Day – Victory in Europe celebrates the end of the Second World War on 8 May 1945. -
Cold war began
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states) and powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others). Lasted several decades. -
Cuban Revolution started
Cuban Revolution. The Cuban Revolution (Spanish: Revolución cubana) was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies against the authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. -
Tet Offense occured
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
Kent State Massacre
The Kent State shootings were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a mass protest against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. -
Jackson State Killings
A group of students were confronted by city and state police. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. The event happened only 11 days after the Kent State shootings -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's rapprochement between the United States and China. -
Boycott of the 1980 Olympics
In 1980, the United States led a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the late 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In total, 65 nations refused to participate in the games, whereas 80 countries sent athletes to compete. -
The Berlin wall collapsed.
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army invade Kuwait
The invasion started on 2 August 1990, and within two days most of the Kuwait Armed Forces were either overrun by the Iraqi Republican Guard or fell back to neighboring Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The State of Kuwait was annexed, and Saddam Hussein announced a few days later that it was the 19th province of Iraq. -
START I was signed, drastically reduced number of warheads in both countries.
START I was the first treaty to provide for deep reductions of U.S. and Soviet/Russian strategic nuclear weapons. It played an indispensable role in ensuring the predictability and stability of the strategic balance and serving as a framework for even deeper reductions -
START II was signed
The START-2 Treaty was signed on January 3, 1993 by President George Bush and President Boris Yeltsin. The Treaty codifies the Joint Understanding signed by the two Presidents at the Washington Summit on June 17, 1992.START II, when implemented, will eliminate heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles and all other multiple-warhead -
19 Islamist terrorists hijacked 4 commercial passenger jet airlines.
On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. -
US leads attack on Afghanistan
a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States “war on terrorism” and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
