Presidential Succession Act is signed into law by President Truman.
U.S. and Great Britain begin airlift of food and fuel to West Berlin.
Truman's second inauguration.
Soviets end blockade of Berlin
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Vietnamese War
North Korean communists invade South Korea.
President Truman, without the approval of Congress, commits American troops to battle.
Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, limiting the president to two terms.
Puerto Rico becomes a U.S. commonwealth.
Dwight Eisenhower is inaugurated as the 34th president.
Armistice agreement is signed.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.: Landmark Supreme Court decision declares that racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional.
Eisenhower's second inauguration.
President sends federal troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., to enforce integration of black students.
Explorer I, first American satellite, is launched.
Hawaii becomes the 50th state.
Alaska becomes the 49th state.
U.S. severs diplomatic relations with Cuba.
John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th president.
Bay of Pigs invasion fails
Lt. Col. John Glenn becomes first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech
President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Tex. He is succeeded in office by his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act.
L. Johnson's second inauguration.
President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory voting practices.
Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.
Richard Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th president.
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, Jr., become the first men to land on the Moon
The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
U.S. and Soviet Union sign strategic arms control agreement known as SALT I.
Nixon's second inauguration.
Nixon resigns from presidency; he is succeeded in office by his vice president, Gerald Ford.
Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as the 39th president.
President Carter signs treaty agreeing to turn control of Panama Canal over to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999.
Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th president
President Reagan is shot in the chest by John Hinckley, Jr.
Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in as the first woman Supreme Court justice.
Reagan's second inauguration.
Space shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members.
Reagan and Gorbachev sign INF treaty, the first arms-control agreement to reduce the superpowers' nuclear weapons.
George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as the 41st president.
Oil tanker Exxon Valdez spills more than 10 million gallons of oil. It is the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
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Persian Gulf War
U.S. and Soviet Union sign START I treaty, agreeing to further reduce strategic nuclear arms.
Bill Clinton is inaugurated as the 42nd president.
Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, files a federal lawsuit against President Clinton for sexual harassment.
Clinton's second inauguration
President Clinton denies having had a sexual relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky.
U.S. and China sign historic trade agreement.
George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43rd president.
Attack on the World Trade Center
President Bush labels Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an “axis of evil” and declares that U.S. will wage war against states that develop weapons of mass destruction.
War waged by the U.S. and Britain against Iraq begins.
President Bush signs $350 billion tax-cut bill.
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Hurricane Katrina wreaks catastrophic damage on Mississippi and Louisiana
California Democrat Nancy Pelosi becomes the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The minimum wage in the U.S. increases to $5.85, up from $5.15
After months of unraveling, the economy finally comes crashing down in 2008, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling 4.4% in one day
Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President
Barrack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President