U.S. History: 1877-2008

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    Early American History (1776-1860)

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    Civil War/Reconstruction (1860-1877)

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    The Gilded Age (1877-1900)

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    The Progressive Era (1890-1920)

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    Imperialism (1898-1910)

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    World War I (1914-1918)

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    Roaring Twenties (1920-1929)

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    Great Depression (1929-1939)

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    World War II (1939-1945)

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    United Nations formed

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    Early Cold War (1945-1960)

    Containment-the action of keeping something harmful under control
    Arms Race/Space Race-an informal 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, to achieve firsts in spaceflight capability
    The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics-is established, made up of confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation
    Domino Theory-that a political event in one country will cause similar events in neighboring countries
  • 22nd Amendment

    prohibits anyone who has been elected president twice from being elected again
  • Truman Doctrine

    U.S. policy that gave military and economic aid to countries threatened by communism
  • Marshall Plan

    program to help European countries rebuild after World War II
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    Berlin Airlift

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    NATO established

  • Sweatt v. Painter

    ruled the separate law school at the University of Texas failed to qualify as “separate but equal”
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    Civil Rights Era (1950-1970)

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    Korean War

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    Korean War

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    Rosenbergs trial

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    First H-Bomb detonated by the United States

  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

    overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and mandated desegregation
  • Hernandez v. Texas

    Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, was a landmark case, "the first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period."
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    Vietnam War (1954-1976)

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    Jonas Salk invents the Polio Vaccine

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    Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks’ arrest

    The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and a social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the civil rights movement in the United States.
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    USSR launches Sputnik

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    Little Rock Nine integrated into an all-white school in Little Rock, AK

    During the summer of 1957, the Little Rock Nine enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which until then had been all white. The students' effort to enroll was supported by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which had declared segregated schooling to be unconstitutional.
  • OPEC

    The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is a permanent, intergovernmental Organization, created at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
  • AIDS Epidemic

    The AIDS epidemic, caused by HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), found its way to the United States as early as 1960, but was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in gay men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981.
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    Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba

    The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution.
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    Berlin Wall built to prevent people from leaving communist East Berlin

    Berlin Wall: Photograph of the Berlin Wall taken from the West side. The Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and stop an economically disastrous migration of workers. It was a symbol of the Cold War, and its fall in 1989 marked the approaching end of the war.
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    Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

    During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. ... Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.
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    Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March on Washington

    "I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.
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    John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, TX

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza.
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    begins undeclared war in Vietnam
  • 24th Amendment

    The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    Made discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin in public places illegal and required employers to hire on an equal opportunity basis
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Eliminated literacy tests for voters
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    Medicare and Medicaid established (1965)

    For 50 years, these programs have been protecting the health and well-being of millions of American families, saving lives, and improving the economic security of our nation.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1968

    prohibited discrimination in the sale or rental of housing
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    Tet Offensive (1968)

    The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War
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    Martin Luther King is assassinated

    Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American, Baptist minister, and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.
  • Tinker v. Des Moines

    Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined First Amendment rights of students in U.S. public schools.
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    First Man on the Moon

    Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin formed the American crew that landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC.
  • Kent State University shooting

    The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre, were the killings of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio, 40 miles south of Cleveland.
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    End of the Cold War (1970-1991)

  • 26th Amendment

    moved the voting age from 21 years old to 18 years old
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    Pentagon Papers leaked (1971)

    The Pentagon Papers, officially titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force", was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. In June of 1971, small portions of the report were leaked to the press and widely distributed.
  • Title IX

    protects people from discrimination based on gender in education programs
  • War Powers Act

    law limited the President’s right to send troops to battle without Congressional approval
  • Watergate Scandal, which leads to Nixon’s Resignation

    He fired White House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee and said that he believed and suspected the conversations in the Oval Office were being taped. This information became the bombshell that helped force Richard Nixon to resign rather than be impeached.
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    Fall of Saigon (1975)

    The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong on 30 April 1975.
  • Community Reinvestment Act of 1977

    The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), enacted in 1977, requires the Federal Reserve and other federal banking regulators to encourage financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they do business, including low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods.
  • Camp David Accords

    The Camp David Accords were a pair of political agreements signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David, the country retreat of the President of the United States in Maryland.
  • Iran Hostage Crisis

    On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained more than 50 Americans, ranging from the Chargé d'Affaires to the most junior members of the staff, as hostages. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days.
  • Three Mile Island Disaster

    The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, and subsequent radiation leak that occurred on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.
  • Sandra Day O’Connor

    Sandra Day O'Connor is a retired attorney and politician who served as the first woman associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was the first woman nominated and confirmed.
  • Star Wars

    The Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed the "Star Wars program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons.
  • Iran Contra Affair

    The Iran–Contra affair, popularized in Iran as the McFarlane affair, the Iran–Contra scandal, or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration.
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    1990s-21st Century (1990-2008)