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1492
The Discovery of America by Columbus
After the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spanish, Portuguese and later English, French and Dutch colonial expeditions arrived in the New World, conquering and settling the discovered lands, which led to a transformation of the cultural and physical landscape in the Americas. The significance was that he wanted to get a shorter way to India, but then began genocide. It was good for the Europeans, but bad for the natives. -
The Settlement of Jamestown
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. William Kelso writes that Jamestown "is where the British Empire began". The significance is that that town was the first town to be settled under America. -
The French and Indian War
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. The significance is that both American and French colonies wanted to pity each other. -
The Boston Tea Party
On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. It was significance because America didn't want to be under Britain's control and still have them supply tea. -
The Battle of Lexington and Concord
First Revolutionary Battle at Lexington and Concord. In April 1775, when British troops are sent to confiscate colonial weapons, they run into an untrained and angry militia. This ragtag army defeats 700 British soldiers and the surprise victory bolsters their confidence for the war ahead. It was significant because Britain and an angry militia mob got into a feud. -
Declaration of Independece
A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood is an assertion by a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. This regulated America's ways of laws. This involved the senates and other very important people who dealt with America's future. -
The Battle of Yorktown
The Siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the Surrender at Yorktown, German Battle or the Siege of Little York, ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia. -
The Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This convention took mostly part of the constitution and such. -
The Invention of the Cotton Gin
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. A lot of slaves and poor folks used this machine to work and pick out the seeds from the cotton. -
The Alien and Sedition Acts
Signed into law by President John Adams in 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts consisted of four laws passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress as America prepared for war with France. ... An Act Respecting Alien Enemies. An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States (Sedition Act). -
The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs. This is significant because America paid off their debt. -
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom and their respective allies. This is significant because both countries had their differences and one of them wanted their independence from one another. -
The Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. This is significant because Missouri wanted to be a pro-slave state while others were trying to abolish it. -
Andrew Jackson's Election
The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a re-match between incumbent President John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, who won a plurality of the electoral college vote in the 1824 election. -
The Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. This showed how the financial crisis went down and money went missing. -
The Invention of the Telegraph
The young American republic wanted just such a system along its entire Atlantic coast and offered a prize of $30,000 for a workable proposal. The framers of this legislation had no way of knowing that when they used the word "telegraph" to refer to this visual semaphore system, they would be offered an entirely new and revolutionary means of communication--electricity. It was used to communicate with people and a way to get in contact with one another -
The Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. -
The 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. This is important because it shows that the Native Americans were here first. -
The Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
The Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army that started the American Civil War. -
Civil War
The American Civil War (commonly known as the "Civil War" in the United States) was fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The result of a long-standing controversy over slavery, war broke out in April 1861. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States of America, who advocated for states’ rights to perpetual slavery and its expansion in the Americas. The significance was so they could keep the south a part of the Union, not to free the slaves. -
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863 -
Surrender at Appomattax Courthouse
On April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg. -
Abraham Lincoln's Assassination
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., just as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. -
13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, known collectively as the Civil War Amendments, were designed to ensure equality for recently emancipated slaves. The 13th Amendment banned slavery and all involuntary servitude, except in the case of punishment for a crime. This shows significance because it was dealing with slavery and how they lived. -
Andrew Johnson's Impeachment
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson occurred in 1868, when the United States House of Representatives resolved to impeach President Andrew Johnson, adopting eleven articles of impeachment detailing his "high crimes and misdemeanors", in accordance with Article Two of the United States Constitution. This is important because it deals/showed what scandals he went through. -
The Organization of Standard Oil Trust
Standard Oil Trust organized. John D. Rockefeller created Standard Oil Trust by trading stockholders' shares for trust certificates. The trust was designed to allow Rockefeller and other Standard Oil stockholders to get around state laws prohibiting one company from owning stock in another. -
The Invention of the Electric Light, Telephone, and Airplane
The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was born in Scotland in 1847, the same year as Thomas Edison. He went to university in Edinburgh and London, then immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the U.S. a year later. There he used visible speech (a type of phonetic notation that shows the position of the throat, mouth, and tongue to make different sounds) to teach deaf-mute people how speak. This is important because it shows how everything changed our life. -
The Pullman and Homestead Strikes
Homestead and pullman strikes homestead strike The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company. -
The Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba. This was important because it showed the conflict between both countries. -
Theodore Roosevelt Becomes President
Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President William McKinley, but resigned from that post to lead the Rough Riders during the Spanish–American War. ... Following McKinley's assassination in September 1901, Roosevelt became president at age 42, and remains the youngest president. This is significant because it shows how Roosevelt was president during the Spanish-American War.
