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Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in early 1848, sparking a sudden flood of people looking for their fortune in California that peaked in 1852. Over 300,000 people are said to have migrated to the region during the Gold Rush. -
The Homestead Act passed in 1862 during the Civil War, allowed any adult citizen or intending citizen who had never engaged in armed conflict with the American government to claim 160 acres of surveyed public land. Claimants had to occupy the property, maintain it by farming, and otherwise "improve" it. -
After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, which aimed to safeguard Black men's right to vote, was ratified into the U.S. Constitution in 1870. Despite the amendment, several discriminatory tactics were utilized within a short period of time, particularly in the South, to prevent Black individuals from exercising their right to vote. -
In the informal, unwritten Compromise of 1877, which resolved the contentious 1876 presidential election, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president on the condition that he would withdraw federal forces from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. -
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut salaries for the third time in a year on July 14, sparking the start of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, also known as the Great Upheaval. The first strike in the United States to affect several states was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
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A peace agreement known as the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. It ended the state of war between Germany and the majority of the Allied Powers, making it the most significant treaty of World War I. Exactly five years after the war-starting death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it was signed in the Palace of Versailles. -
The 19th amendment, approved by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, gave women the right to vote. The right to vote for women in America is legally protected under the 19th amendment. -
Twelve days after the claimed crime, their trials began, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, eight of the nine were found guilty by all-white juries and given the death penalty via electric chair. -
The "New Deal" of President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to stimulate economic growth and increase employment among Americans through federal intervention. Attempts were made by new federal agencies to regulate agricultural production, maintain prices and salaries, and develop a sizable public works program for the unemployed. -
In order to carry out Executive Order 8802, which forbade "discriminatory employment practices by Federal agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war-related work," the Fair Employment Practice Committee was established in the United States in 1941.
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On Iwo Jima, the Imperial Army of Japan and U.S. Marines engaged in a five-week-long war following American forces' invasion of the island on February 19, 1945. The Battle for Okinawa, the last significant amphibious assault of World War II, started on April 1, 1945, when American infantry and Marines landed with strong naval artillery and aerial assistance. The 82-day campaign ended with an Allied victory.
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World War 2 erupted on a global scale from 1939 until 1945. The vast majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, participated in combat as members of the Allies and the Axis, two diametrically opposed military coalitions.
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In a historic case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, even where the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. -
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest against the practice of racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama's public transportation system. It was a key moment in the development of the American civil rights movement. -
The Cold War standoff involving the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was the closest the two superpowers ever come to a nuclear exchange. -
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ratified this statute. It prohibited the discriminatory voting practices implemented in several southern states following the Civil War, such as the requirement of passing literacy tests in order to cast a ballot.
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The mission of NOW is to engage in intersectional grassroots activism in order to advance feminist ideas, drive societal change, end discrimination, and secure and defend the equal rights of all women and girls in all spheres of social, political, and economic life. -
President John F. Kennedy set the nation's objective to make a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth eight years before, and the Apollo 11 crew achieved it on July 20, 1969. -
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, also known as simply "Woodstock," was a music festival that took place in Bethel, New York, 40 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, from August 15 to 18, 1969. -
The U.S. Supreme Court made history when it held in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, that a pregnant person's right to an abortion is usually protected by the U.S. Constitution.