-
Oct 9, 1492
The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus
This is an important event because, it marks the day the New World was first discovered by Europe. -
The Settlement of Jamestown
This is a very significant date because, on this day the Virginia Company settlers landed on Jamestown Island to establish an English colony 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. -
Period: to
The French and Indian War
The French and Indian War comprised the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War of 1756–63. It pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France. Both sides were supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France, as well as by American Indian allies. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This was an important event because, it was one of the causes that lead to the American Revolution. -
The Battle of Lexington and Concord
The Battle of Lexington and Concord was the first military engagement of the American Revolutionary War, which makes it very significant The battles were fought on April 19, 1775 the Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge. They marked the outbreak of armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in America. -
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most important event in the history of the United States because, the document was signed when the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states and no longer under British rule. Instead, they formed a new nation: the United States of America. -
Period: to
The Battle of Yorktown
This time span is important because, it was a decisive victory by a combined force of American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington and French Army troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau over a British Army commanded by British peer and Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis. -
Period: to
The Constitutional Convention
This is a significant time span because, it was the creation of the United States Constitution, placing the Convention among the most significant events in the history of the United States. -
The Invention of the Cotton Gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.The fibers are then processed into various cotton goods such as linens, while any undamaged cotton is used largely for textiles like clothing. Seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil. A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. -
Period: to
The Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed by the Federalist-dominated 5th United States Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798. They made it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen, allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous or who were from a hostile nation, and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government. -
The Louisiana Purchase
If the Louisiana Purchase did not occur than the states apart of the purchase might have been very different day. This states included: Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; the portion of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River; a large portion of North Dakota; a large portion of South Dakota; the northeastern section of New Mexico; the northern portion of Texas; the area of Montana, Wyoming, Louisiana, and Colorado. -
Period: to
The Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise is the title generally attached to the legislation passed by the 16th United States Congress on May 8, 1820. The measures provided for the admission of the District of Maine as a state free to ratify a state constitution that neither recognized nor permitted slavery within the state. -
Period: to
Andrew Jackson's Election
The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a re-match between incumbent President John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, who won a plurality of the electoral college vote in the 1824 election. This is an important time span because, it leads to Andrew Jackson being elected as the 11th President of the United States. -
The Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. The panic had both domestic and foreign origins. Speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, and restrictive lending policies in Great Britain were all to blame. -
Period: to
The Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native American nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. The forced relocation was carried out by various government authorities following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. -
The Invention of the Telegraph
This is an important invention because, it helped people communicate information over very long distances. This is similar to how the invention of the cotton gin helped people sort out cotton seeds from the cotton itself. -
Period: to
The Mexican-American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War, the U.S.–Mexican War, the U.S.–Mexico War and in Mexico the American Intervention in Mexico, or United States-Mexico War, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. This is a very important war because, if the U.S. would have won it, we might be in Mexico right now. -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). -
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., just as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died the following day at 7:22 a.m., in the Petersen House opposite the theater. Lincoln was the third American president to die in office, and the first to be murdered. -
Period: to
The Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army that started the American Civil War. On December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson of the U.S. Army surreptitiously moved his small command from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter. -
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally free. -
Period: to
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
The Thirteenth Amendment (proposed and ratified in 1865) abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime. The Fourteenth Amendment (proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for all persons. The Fifteenth Amendment (proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870) prohibits discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." -
Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
The Battle of Appomattox Court House (Virginia, U.S.), fought on the morning of April 9th, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War (1861-1865). It was the final engagement of Confederate States Army general Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army / Army of the Potomac under Lt. Gen. and General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant. -
Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson occurred in 1868, when the United States House of Representatives resolved to impeach President Andrew Johnson, adopting eleven articles of impeachment detailing his "high crimes and misdemeanors," in accordance with Article Two of the United States Constitution. The House's primary charge against Johnson was with violation of the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress the previous year. -
Period: to
The Invention of the Electric Light Bulb, the Telephone, and the Airplane
Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice. Thomas Edison began working on a system of electrical illumination, something he hoped could compete with gas and oil based lighting. The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. -
The Organization of Standard Oil Trust
Standard Oil Trust organized. John D. Rockefeller created Standard Oil Trust by trading stockholders' shares for trust certificates. The trust was designed to allow Rockefeller and other Standard Oil stockholders to get around state laws prohibiting one company from owning stock in another. -
Period: to
The Pullman and Homestead Strikes
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. -
Period: to
The Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. American acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions led to its involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately in the Philippine–American War. -
Theodore Roosevelt Becomes President
Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the U.S. on the 14th of September of 1901. This is significant because, Theodore Roosevelt has achieved many important feats for our country. -
Period: to
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 (1812–1815) was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom and their respective allies. Historians in Britain often see it as a minor theater of the Napoleonic Wars; in the United States and Canada, it is seen as a war in its own right.
