Unit 5 Timeline-Chapters 18-21 By sarahelishevitz 1855 Bessemer converter process allowed steel to be made quickly and inexpensively 1858 Construction of New York’s Central Park begins 1859 First oil well is struck in Titusville, Pennsylvania 1859 Comstock Lode is discovered 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species is published 1862 Congress passes the Homestead Act 1864 Sand Creek Massacre 1869 First Transcontinental Railroad is completed at Promontory, Utah 1873 Joseph Glidden invent barbed wire 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents his telephone 1876 Thomas A. Edison makes the first successful incandescent light bulb 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn 1877 Great Railroad Strike 1877 With the compromise of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes becomes president and Reconstruction comes to an end 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated, president 1877 Supreme court issues Munn vs. Illinois decision 1881 President James A. Garfield is assassinated 1882 John D. Rockefeller organizes the Standard Oil Trust 1882 Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act 1883 Congress passes the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act 1886 In the Haymarket incident, a bomb set off at a Chicago labor rally kills and wounds police officers 1886 American Federation of Labor is organized 1886 Surrender of Geronimo marks the end of the Indian Wars 1886 Supreme court issues Wabash, St Louis and Pacific Railroad Company vs. Illinois decision 1887 Congress passes the Severalty Act 1887 Interstate Commerce Commission is created 1889 Otis Elevator Company installs the first electric elevator 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee 1890 Congress passes the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and the McKinley Tariff 1890 Mississippi plan resegregates public facilities by race 1891 Basketball is invented 1892 Homestead Strike 1892 Ellis Island, federal Center for processing immigrants, opens 1892 People's party drafts its Omaha platform 1893 Frederick J. Turner's “Frontier Thesis” 1893 Economic depression affects a substantial proportion of the population 1894 Pullman Strike 1895 Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromise speech 1896 Supreme court issues Plessy v. Ferguson decision 1900 Baseball's National League is formed 1901 J. Pierpont Morgan creates the US Steel Corporation 1909 National Associates of the Advancements of Colored People (NAACP) is created
