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Homestead Act
Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. -
Transcontinental Railroad Completed
On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, signaling the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad had long been a dream for people living in the American West -
Industrialization Begins to Boom
The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during which predominantly agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. -
Boss Tweed rise at Tammany Hall
Tweed's downfall came in the wake of the Orange riot of 1871, which came after Tammany Hall banned a parade of Irish Protestants celebrating a historical victory against Catholicism, because of a riot the year before in which eight people died when a crowd of Irish Catholic laborers attacked the paraders. -
Telephone Invented
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish-born American scientist best known as the inventor of the telephone, worked at a school for the deaf while attempting to invent a machine that would transmit sound by electricity. -
Reconstruction Ends
With the compromise, the Republicans had quietly given up their fight for racial equality and blacks' rights in the south. In 1877, Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the south, and the bayonet-backed Republican governments collapsed, thereby ending Reconstruction. -
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Gilded Age
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Light Bulb Invented
In 1878, Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp -
Wave of Immigration
Many immigrants came to America seeking greater economic opportunity, while some, such as the Pilgrims in the early 1600s, arrived in search of religious freedom -
Chinese Exclusion act
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Pendleton Act
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Dawes Act
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Interstate Commerce Act
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Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth
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Chicago's Hull House
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Klondike Gold Rush
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Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7) is a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890 under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. -
How the Other Half Lives
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Influence of Sea Power Upon History
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Progressive Era
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Imperialism
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Homestead Steel Labor Strike
The Homestead Strike, also known as the Homestead Steel Strike, Pinkerton Rebellion, or Homestead Massacre, was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892 -
Pullman Labor Strike
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Annexation of Hawaii
Dole declared Hawaii an independent republic. Spurred by the nationalism aroused by the Spanish-American War, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898 at the urging of President William McKinley. Hawaii was made a territory in 1900, and Dole became its first governor. -
Spanish American War
On April 25, 1898 the United States declared war on Spain following the sinking of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. -
Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy is a term in foreign affairs initially used to refer to the United States policy established in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, as enunciated in Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Note, dated September 6, 1899 and dispatched to the major European powers. -
Assassination of President McKinley
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Theodore Roosevelt
Republican Party + progressive party "bull moose" party
Domestic policies: square deal 3 c's
Trust Buster
Nature Consevationist
*Big stick ideology, big stick diplomacy, or big stick policy refers to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy: "speak softly, and carry a big stick -
Panama Canal U.S. Construction Begins
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The Jungle
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Pure Food and Drug Act
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Model-T
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NAACP
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William Howard Taft
Republican Party
Tries 3 C's
16th/17th Amendment
*Dollar diplomacy. Dollar diplomacy of the United States—particularly during President William Howard Taft's term— was a form of American foreign policy to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. -
16th Amendment
income tax -
Federal Reserve Act
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Woodrow Wilson
Democratic Party
Clayton Anti-trust Act
National Parks Services
Federal Reserve Act
18th/19th Amendment
*President Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy was called aggressive moral diplomacy. According to Wilson himself, he initiated a foreign policy founded upon moral principles rather than materialism and economic self-interests. -
17th Amendment
Electing senators -
Assissination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. -
Trench Warfare, Poison Gas, and Machine Guns
Chemical warfare first appeared when the Germans used poison gas during a surprise attack in Flanders, Belgium, in 1915. At first, gas was just released from large cylinders and carried by the wind into nearby enemy lines. Later, phosgene and other gases were loaded into artillery shells and shot into enemy trenches. -
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World War 1
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Sinking of the Lusitania
The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany. -
National Parks System
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Russian Revolution
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U.S. entry into WWI
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Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the prior event of the United States entering World War I against Germany. -
Battle of Argonne Forest
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Armistice
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Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points
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Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers -
18th Amendment
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19th Amendment
women suffage -
President Harding’s Return to Normalcy
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Harlem Renaissance
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Red Scare
The rounding up and deportation of several hundred immigrants of radical political views by the federal government in 1919 and 1920. -
Period: to
Roaring Twenties
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Teapot Dome Scandal
The Teapot Dome Scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. -
Joseph Stalin Leads USSR
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Scopes "Monkey" Trial
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school -
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a 1925 autobiographical book by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany -
Charles Lindbergh's Trans-Atlantic Flight
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St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is the name given to the 1929 murder in Chicago of seven men of the North Side gang during the Prohibition Era. -
Stock Market Crashes “Black Tuesday”
On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
hoovervilles
a shantytown built by unemployed and destitute people during the Depression of the early 1930s. -
smoot-hawley tariff
the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act implementing protectionist trade policies sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods. -
Period: to
Great Depression
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100,000 banks have failed
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agriculture adjustment administartion (AAA)
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federal deposit isurance corporation (FDIC)
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public works administration (PWA)
Public Works Administration, part of the New Deal of 1933 was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. -
Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
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Franklin D. Roosevelt
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New Deal Program
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The Holocaust
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dust bowl
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; -
social sercurity administration (SSA)
On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped. -
Rape of Nanking
The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing, then the capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. -
Kristallnacht
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Hitler invades Poland
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. -
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World War II
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German Blitzkrieg attacks
Germany quickly overran much of Europe and was victorious for more than two years by relying on a new military tactic called the "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war). Blitzkrieg tactics required the concentration of offensive weapons (such as tanks, planes, and artillery) along a narrow front. -
Tuskegee Airmen
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Navajo Code Talkers
The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941 -
Executive Order 9066
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 -
Bataan Death March
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Invasion of Normandy D-Day
The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France, on 6 June 1944. The invaders were able to establish a beachhead as part of Operation Overlord after a successful "D-Day," the first day of the invasion. -
GI Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). -
Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
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Victory over Japan/Pacific Day
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Liberation of Concentration Camps
Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. The Germans had been forced to leave these prisoners behind in their hasty retreat from the camp. -
Victory in Europe day
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germany divided
In 1946, with Eastern Europe under Soviet control and influence, Europe was divided into a West (western democracies and the United States) bloc and East (Soviet Union and Soviet occupied territory) bloc. An "iron curtain" separated Europe. The aftereffects of World War Two were what shaped Cold War Germany. -
United Nations Formed
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II with the aim of preventing another such conflict -
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Harry S. Truman
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Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen as a site for trials that took place in 1945 and 1946. Judges from the Allied powers—Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—presided over the hearings of twenty-two major Nazi criminals. Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to death. -
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Baby boom
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truman doctorine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey. -
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The Cold War
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marshall plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II -
berlin airlift
Truman, however, did not want to cause World War III. Instead, he ordered a massive airlift of supplies into West Berlin. On June 26, 1948, the first planes took off from bases in England and western Germany and landed in West Berlin. -
NATO formed
NATO is a formal alliance between the territories of North American and Europe. From its inception, its main purpose was to defend each other from the possibility of communist Soviet Union taking control of their nation. -
UN forces push North Korea to Yalu River- the border with China
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Chinese forces cross Yalu and enter Korean War
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Kim II sung invades south korea
The fact is that Kim Il-sung in the North wanted to unite Korea – just as Rhee wanted to unite Korea – and Kim chose to invade. Kim Il-sung sent his military south across the 38th Parallel on June 25, 1950. -
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Korean War
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1950's Prosperity
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Ethel and Julius Rosenburg Execution
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Armistice Signed
This armistice signed on July 27, 1953, formally ended the war in Korea. North and South Korea remain separate and occupy almost the same territory they had when the war began -
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Period: to
Warren Court
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Hernandez v Texas
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. In a unanimous ruling, the court held that Mexican Americans and all other nationality groups in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.This was the first case in which Mexican-American lawyers had appeared before the US Supreme Court. -
Brown v Board of education
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Ho Chi Minh Established Communist Rule in Vietnam
Hồ Chí Minh led the Việt Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. He officially stepped down from power in 1965 due to health problems. -
warsaw pact formed
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Polio Vaccine
The first polio vaccine was the inactivated polio vaccine. It was developed by Jonas Salk and came into use in 1955. The oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin and came into commercial use in 1961. -
Period: to
Vietnam War
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Interstate highway act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. -
Elvis Presley first hit song
February 1956. As "Heartbreak Hotel" makes its climb up the charts on its way to #1, "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" b/w "Mystery Train," Elvis' fifth and last single to be released on the Sun label, hits #1 on Billboard's national country singles chart. His first #1 hit on a national chart. -
Sputnik 1
was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. -
Leave it to beaver to first airs on tv
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Kennedy versus Nixon Tv Debate
Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee. This was the first election in which all fifty states participated, as well as the first election in which an incumbent president was ineligible to run for another term due to the Twenty-second Amendment. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. -
Peace Corps Formed
The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand American culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. -
Mapp v Ohio
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), was a landmark case in criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," -
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John F Kennedy
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Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union -
Kennedy Assination in Dallas Texas
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Gideon v. Wainwright
Clarence Earl Gideon was charged in Florida state court with a felony. When he appeared in court without a lawyer, Gideon requested that the court appoint one for him. Gideon represented himself in trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. Gideon filed a habeas corpus petition in the Florida Supreme Court and argued that the trial court's decision violated his constitutional right to be represented by counsel. -
Period: to
Lyndon B Johnson
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The Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
Escobedo v Illinois
was a United States Supreme Court case holding that criminal suspects have a right to counsel during police interrogations under the Sixth Amendment. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. -
Miranda v Arizona
Ernesto Miranda was arrested in his house and brought to the station where he was questioned by police officers in connection with a kidnapping and rape.The written confession was admitted into evidence at trial the fact that the police officers admitted that they had not advised Miranda of his right to have an attorney present during the interrogation.Supreme Court of Arizona affirmed and held that Miranda’s constitutional rights were not violated because he did not specifically request counsel -
Tet Offensive
The North Vietnamese launched a wave of attacks in the late night hours of 30 January in the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This early attack did not lead to widespread defensive measures. When the main North Vietnamese operation began the next morning, the offensive was countrywide and well coordinated -
My Lai Massacre
A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. U.S. Army officers covered up the carnage for a year before it was reported in the American press, sparking a firestorm of international outrage -
Tinker v Des Moines
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Vietnamization
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Woodstock Music Festival
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Manson Family Murders
The Manson Family was a commune established in California in the late 1960s, led by Charles Manson. They gained national notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on August 9, 1969 by Tex Watson and three other members of the Family, acting under the instructions of Charles Manson. -
Draft Lottery
On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States conducted two lotteries to determine the order of call to military service in the Vietnam War for men born from 1944 to 1950. These lotteries occurred during a period of conscription from just before World War II to 1973. It was the first time a lottery system had been used to select men for military service since 1942. -
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Nixon Richardson
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Invasion Of Cambodia
The Cambodian Campaign was a series of military operations conducted in eastern Cambodia during 1970 by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War -
Kent State Shootings
The Kent State shootings were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a mass protest against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio -
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on, with more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1968, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg—who had worked on the study. He photocopied the report and in March 1971 gave the copy to The New York Times, which then published a series of scathing articles based on the report’s most damning secrets. -
26th amendment
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War Powers Resolution
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Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975.
