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The Louisiana Purchase acquired U.S. territory beyond the Mississippi River, ultimately resulting in a westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean. -
A victory over the French at the battle of Trafalgar established British naval supremacy. Battle of Trafalgar, naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, which established British naval supremacy for more than 100 years; it was fought west of Cape Trafalgar, Spain, between Cádiz and the Strait of Gibraltar. -
The British occupied Cape Colony in South Africa, thus preparing the
a way for the arrival in 1820 of a large number of British settlers. -
Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was published. The first edition of An American Dictionary of the English Language was published in two volumes in 1828 when Webster was 70 years old. -
In New Zealand, by the Treaty of Waitangi, native Maori ceded
sovereignty to the British crown. -
A proposal at the Philological Society of London led to work that
resulted in the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1928), reissued as the Oxford English Dictionary (1933), 2nd edition 1989, now revised online. -
The Government of India Act transferred power from East India
Company to the crown, thus creating the British Raj in India. -
The American Civil War established the indissolubility of the Union
and abolished slavery in America. -
The four-month Spanish-American War made the United States a world power with overseas possessions and thus a major participant in international
politics. -
The first public radio broadcast was aired, leading in 1920 to the first
American commercial radio station in Pittsburgh. -
World War I created an alliance between the United States and the
The United Kingdom. -
The British Broadcasting Company (after 1927, Corporation) was
established and became a major conveyor of information in English around the world. -
The first motion picture with spoken dialog, The Jazz Singer, was
released. -
The first high-definition television service was established by the BBC, to be followed by cable service in the early 1950s and satellite service in the early 1960s. -
World War II further solidified the British-American link. -
The charter of the United Nations was produced in San Francisco,
leading to the establishment of UN headquarters in New York City. -
British India was divided into India and Pakistan, and both were
given independence. -
Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary was
published. -
January 1, 1983, is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. -
The first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was developed in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee for the NeXT Computer (at the same time as the first web server for the same machine) and introduced to his colleagues at CERN in March 1991. -
An estimated 363 billion text messages were sent in the United States, 429 billion in China, and 2.3 trillion worldwide.