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The 1900 Storm, also known as the Great Galveston hurricane, was the deadliest natural disaster in US history and the fifth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane globally. In the United States, the hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people; the figure most frequently given in official accounts is 8,000. -
Three years after the battle began in 1914, the United States enters World War I, declaring war on Germany (April 6, 1917). The United States stayed neutral. However, in the face of Germany's unrestricted submarine aggression against neutral ships, especially those carrying passengers, neutrality was becoming increasingly impossible to preserve. The Armistice that officially ends World War I is signed (Nov. 11, 1918). -
The Texas legislature passed a resolution ratifying the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, on June 28, 1919. Texas was the ninth state in the United States to ratify the amendment and the first in the South. -
In 1924, Miriam Amanda "Ma" Wallace Ferguson, also known as "Ma" Ferguson, became Texas' first female governor. In addition to opposing the Ku Klux Klan and prohibition, her campaign promised to cut government spending. During her administration, her refusal to cut spending and liberal pardons sparked controversy. She did not run for reelection in 1926 and 1928, lost in 1930, and was elected governor for a second term in 1932.
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The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939, was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. It all started after the October 1929 stock market crash, which plunged Wall Street into a frenzy and wiped out millions of investors. By 1933, when the Great Depression had reached its worst, 15 million Americans had lost their jobs, and approximately half of the country's banks had collapsed. -
Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party, rose to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, rearmed the country, and forged strategic alliances with Italy and Japan to further his dreams of world dominance. The invasion of Poland by Hitler in September 1939 prompted the U.K. and France to declare war on Germany, kicking off World War II. The fight would claim more lives and destroy more land and property around the world in the next six years than any previous conflict. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark Supreme Court case from 1954 in which the justices unanimously held that racial segregation of pupils in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case in the civil rights movement, establishing the precedent that "separate but equal" education and other services were in fact unequal. -
On August 6, 1945, the United States launched its first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, from a B-29 bomber plane known as the Enola Gay. The "Little Boy" burst with a force of around 13 kilotons, flattening five square miles of the city and instantaneously killing 80,000 people. Thousands more would perish as a result of the radiation. On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender, saying "a new and most cruel bomb," effectively ending World War II. -
In an open-top convertible, the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas. The day was November 22, with a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas. At 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three rounds from the Texas School Book Depository Building, killing President Kennedy. Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital in Dallas 30 minutes later. He was 46 years old at the time. -
Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first people to arrive on the moon on July 20, 1969. Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon around six and a half hours later. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong famously exclaimed as he took his first steps. President John F. Kennedy established a national objective of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.