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1865 Freedmans Bureau
This was created in the south to help transition from slavery to a freed individual. It delivered food to freed blacks and whites alike in the south. Helped these individuals gain labor contracts, reunited the newly freed to family members lost during slavery. It also focused on education and helped create public schools where freed people and poor whites could receive elementary and higher education. This bureau received also support from christian organizations that had advocated for abolition -
1873 Invention of barbed wire
Initially called devils rope by the Indians. Joseph Glidden was not the first to come up with this idea but was the first to claim the winning design and he patented it in 1873. In Oklahoma where it was a standard to raise long horns by free range grazing, cowboys wanted a way to fence off their lands and claim cattle and ultimately fence off land they wanted whether or not it was legally theirs to claim. This invention ended free range grazing and kept more land away from Indian tribes. -
1876 Thomas Edison declares himself a full time inventor
Today we remember Thomas Edison & all his accomplishments. He registered 1093 patents in his lifetime & ran a world famous laboratory. Some of the many items he invented such as the motion picture projector and storage battery we still use today. The item that led to his greatest fame was the incandescent light bulb. With the help of JP Morgan in 1882 he was able to create his own Edison electric illuminating company, & supply electrical current to a small number of customers in NYC. -
1885 Chicago completes first 10 story skyscraper
The need for space was needed in these rapidly growing inner Chicago cities. The landscape made it impossible to expand outward so they started to build upward thus creating the first 10 story sky scraper, which was a home insurance building. It became a frenzy of building sky scrapers in the center of eastern cities once the first electric elevator was installed in 1889 by a man named James Otis who owned the Otis elevator company. -
1895 Grand opening of Coney Island
The opening of Coney Island, on the Brooklyn shoreline in 1895 was a great addition to the many forms of entertainment. This was the 1st amusement park of this time. It consisted of several different amusement parks that had wild rides, animal attractions & large stage productions. They even had freak side shows. For 10 cents people were able to be entertained & forget the struggles of everyday working lives. This park opened the doors for other city's to follow & open up smaller amusement parks -
1914 Panama Canal opens
Construction began in May 1904. For the first few years the US worked on securing securing housing & other necessities for the workers that had previously failed. Roosevelt had became the 1st US president to leave the country while in office. He traveled to Panama to visit the site & take a turn at the steam shovel, removing dirt. The construction of the canal introduced fumigation & nets due to malaria.The canal finally opened in 1914 forever changing world trade & military defense patterns. -
1915 The Lusitania sunken by German U-boat
On May 7, 1915 British passenger ship on its way from NY to Liverpool, the RMS Lusitania was unlawfully sunken by a German U boat. The u boat never gave these passengers and crew a chance to surrender or surfaced to give warning. They simply fired upon the ship killing 1200 civilians of them 128 Americans. This ship was targeted due to the cargo of ammunition it was carrying. These U boats (undersea) boats were dispatched by the Germans to attack merchant & military ships around great Britain. -
1927 First "Talkie" movie release
The Jazz Singer. This film was first released in NYC & took place in the 1920s. Was about the life of a Jewish man from boyhood days of being groomed to be the cantor at the local synagogue to his life as a famous and “Americanized” jazz singer. This movie along with the new sound technology used to present it were popular with audiences around the country. It quickly became a huge hit for Warner Brothers. This was the first movie that had sound, the popular movies prior to this were all silent
