important events of U.S history

  • Colonial Settlement

    Colonial Settlement

    England sought to emulate other European powers by establishing colonies in the New World. The goal of the colonists and their supporters was to increase England's territorial hegemony and to enrich themselves.
  • The American Revolution

    The American Revolution

    13 of Great Britain's North American colonies threw off British rule to establish the sovereign United States of America, founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
  • Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.

    The Committee of Seventy is an independent, non-partisan advocate for better government in Philadelphia that works to achieve clean and effective government, better elections and informed and engaged citizens.
  • The New Nation

    The New Nation

    The leaders of the American Revolution made three great gambles. First, they sought independence from the powerful British Empire, becoming the first colonies in the Americas to revolt and seek independence from their mother empire.
  • National Expansion and Reform

    National Expansion and Reform

    These reforms included promoting temperance, creating public school systems, improving the treatment of prisoners, the insane, and the poor, abolishing slavery, and gaining equal rights for women.
  • Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

    The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance.
  • American Civil War

    American Civil War

    The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States fought between the Union and the Confederacy. The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into territories acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican–American War.
  • The term ecology

    he word "ecology" was coined by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel in 1866. Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was a German zoologist. He also coined the terms like phylum, phylogeny, and Protista.
  • the term acid rain

    In 1845 he established himself as an independent analytical chemist. Working in London in 1852 he first coined the phrase "acid rain" when he made the connection between the industrial pollution so rampant in the city at the time, and the acidity of the city's rainfall. He went on to publish, in 1872
  • Rise of Industrial America

    Rise of Industrial America

    Overview In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. The American West, 1865-1900 The completion of the railroads to the West following the Civil War opened up vast areas of the region to settlement and economic development.
  • Progressive Era to New Era

    Progressive Era to New Era

    The Progressive Era in America continued its economic growth and prosperity. The incomes of working people increased along with those of middle class and wealthier Americans.
  • The term Smog by Henry Anoine Des Voeux

    The term smog was first coined in 1905 in a paper by Dr. Henry Antoine Des Voeux to describe the combination of smoke and fog that had been plaguing London during that time.
  • World War 1

    World War 1

    World War 1 was an international conflict that in 1914–18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions.
  • US Congress created the National Park Service

    Congress created the National Park Service and prescribed that the fundamental purpose of national parks, monuments, and other reservations is "to conserve the scenery, and the natural and historic objects and wild life
  • World War 2

    World War 2

    was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries including all of the great powers forming two opposing military alliances, the Allies and the Axis powers.
  • Cold War

    Cold War

    The Cold War was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed after World War II.
  • Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring

    Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book was published on September 27, 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides.
  • The Apollo 8 picture of Earthrise

    On Christmas Eve in 1968, William Anders, aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft, turned his camera toward Earth and captured a photo that's now legendary. It was a photo that showed humans a new perspective, with the moon in the foreground and Earth floating in distant space
  • First Earth Day, 1970

    Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time on April 22, 1970. Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches and educational programs across the country.
  • Montreal Protocol

    The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion.
  • The Kyoto Protocol

    The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international environmental treaty with the goal of “stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
  • U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol

    Bush administration Similar objections to the Kyoto Protocol were why the Bush administration refused to sign. They argued the division between Annex 1 and developing countries was unfair, and that both countries needed to reduce their emissions unilaterally.
  • U.S. announces it will cease participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation

    On June 1, 2017, United States President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, contending that the agreement would "undermine" the U.S. economy, and put the U.S. "at a permanent disadvantage."
  • U.S. announces it will rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation

    It covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The Agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France