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The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
The Battles of c on 19 April 1775, the famous 'shot heard 'round the world', marked the start of the American War of Independence (1775-83). Politically disastrous for the British, it persuaded many Americans to take up arms and support the cause of independence. -
In December, 1777, General George Washington moved the Continental Army to their winter quarters at Valley Forge. By the time the army marched into Valley Forge on December 19, they were suffering not only from cold, hunger, and fatigue, but from low morale in the wake of the disastrous Philadelphia Campaign. -
Death of George Washington. On the evening of December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon, George Washington passed away of a throat infection. He was buried four days later in the family vault at Mount Vernon. -
Siege of Yorktown, (September 28–October 19, 1781), joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender. The siege virtually ended military operations in the American Revolution. -
March 1, 1781 - Maryland delegates signed the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were finally ratified by all thirteen states. February 21, 1787 - Congress approved a plan to hold a convention in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. -
On June 21, 1788, the Constitution became the official framework of the government of the United States of America when New Hampshire became the ninth of 13 states to ratify it. Until the new Constitution was ratified, the country was governed by the Articles of Confederation. -
The inauguration was held nearly two months after the beginning of the first four-year term of George Washington as President. With this inauguration, the executive branch of the United States government officially began operations under the new frame of government established by the 1787 Constitution. -
In his farewell Presidential address, George Washington advised American citizens to view themselves as a cohesive unit and avoid political parties and issued a special warning to be wary of attachments and entanglements with other nations. -
In what is sometimes referred to as the "Revolution of 1800", Vice President Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party defeated incumbent President John Adams of the Federalist Party. The election was a political realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican leadership. -
The U.S. Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (1803) established the principle of judicial review—the power of the federal courts to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional. The unanimous opinion was written by Chief Justice John Marshall. The Supreme Court issued its opinion on February 24, 1803 -
The Dead Rabbits riot was a two-day civil disturbance in New York City evolving from what was originally a small-scale street fight between members of the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys into a citywide gang war, which occurred July 4–5, 1857. -
Ku Klux Klan, either of two distinct U.S. hate organizations that employed terror in pursuit of their white supremacist agenda. One group was founded immediately after the Civil War and lasted until the 1870s. The other began in 1915 and has continued to the present. -
In 1870, he established Standard Oil, which by the early 1880s controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. Critics accused Rockefeller of engaging in unethical practices, such as predatory pricing and colluding with railroads to eliminate his competitors in order to gain a monopoly in the industry. -
On March 7, 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention: the telephone. The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. -
The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the first land run into the Unassigned Lands of former Indian Territory, which had earlier been assigned to the Creek and Seminole peoples. An estimated 50,000 people were lined up at the start, seeking to gain a piece of the available two million acres -
The first Ellis Island Immigration Station officially opens on January 1, 1892, as three large ships wait to land. Seven hundred immigrants passed through Ellis Island that day, and nearly 450,000 followed over the course of that first year. -
The Wizard of Oz was a 1902 musical extravaganza based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. -
Roosevelt took office as vice president in 1901 and assumed the presidency at age 42 after McKinley was assassinated the following September. He remains the youngest person to become President of the United States. -
J. P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel on March 2, 1901 (incorporated on February 25) by financing the merger of Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company for $492 million ($15.31 billion today). -
"The History of the Standard Oil Company" grew to be a 19-part series, published between November 1902 and October 1904. Tarbell wrote a detailed expose of Rockefeller's unethical tactics, sympathetically portraying the plight of Pennsylvania's independent oil workers. -
The Ford Motor Company is an American automaker, the world's fifth largest based on worldwide vehicle sales. Based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, it was founded by Henry Ford on June 16, 1903. -
Passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified February 3, 1913, the 16th amendment established Congress's right to impose a Federal income tax. At first, Congress placed a flat 3-percent tax on all incomes over $800 and later modified this principle to include a graduated tax. -
In January 1910, over the late objections of Chinese community leaders, this hastily built immigration station was opened on the northeastern edge of Angel Island, ready to receive its first guests. -
Passed by Congress May 13, 1912, and ratified April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment modified Article I, section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators. Prior to its passage, Senators were chosen by state legislatures. -
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the state of New York.
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