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The Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The document announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It was the last of a series of steps that led the colonies to final separation from Great Britain. -
The Battle of New Orleans was the final major battle of the War of 1812, fought between the British Empire and the newly formed United States. ... American troops, led by future President Andrew Jackson, defeated the much larger British force, which bolstered U.S. hopes for a speedy end to the war. -
ended the war between the United States and Mexico. according to the treaty, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including parts of present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, to the United States. -
The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest battle of the American Civil War as well as the largest battle ever fought in North America, involving around 85,000 men in the Union’s Army of the Potomac under Major General George Gordon Meade and approximately 75,000 in the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert Edward Lee. -
President Theodore Roosevelt instructed his Justice Department to break up this holding company on the grounds that it was an illegal combination acting in restraint of trade. Using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the federal government did so and the Northern Securities Company sued to appeal the ruling. -
Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. The next day, the panic selling reached its peak with some stocks having no buyers at any price. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first instances of atomic bombs used against humans, killing tens of thousands of people, obliterating the cities, and contributing to the end of World War II. -
At the center of the widespread social and political upheaval of the 1960s were the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, the emergence of youth-oriented counterculture, and the establishment and reactionary elements that pushed back against change. The April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent civil rights leader, revealed the tragic, violent consequences that could result from a country’s political polarization. -
series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history.