US History 1865-1920

  • Bessemer Process

    The first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel.
  • Discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak

    The year gold was discovered in Pikes Peak.
  • Morrill Land grant act

    The United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states
  • Homestead Act

    Congress provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm the land.
  • Transcontinental r/r completed

    The Transcontinental railroad from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California was completed.
  • Jacob Riis published his book of photos

    A pioneer in the use of photography as an agent of social reform.
  • Statue of Liberty built

    The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor and was a gift from France.
  • Battle of Little Bighorn

    The battle was a momentary victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne.
  • Farmers alliance created

    The Farmers' Alliance was first organized in Texas and soon spread to other states and territories in the South and Midwest. The goal was to form cooperatives.
  • Thomas Edison invents light bulb

    Thomas Edison invents the first incandescent electric light.
  • Carlisle school established

    The first government-run boarding school for Native American children.
  • Carlisle school established

    The first government-run boarding school for Native American children.
  • Chinese exclusion act

    This act provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States.
  • Edison lights up NYC

    Edison's company flipped a switch in Pearl Street power station that sent electricity to hundreds of homes in Manhattan.
  • American federation of labor founded

    A national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL–CIO.
  • Dawes act

    The Dawes Act regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States.
  • Interstate commerce act passed

  • Alfred T Mahan writes his book on sea power

    a revolutionary analysis of the importance of naval power as a factor in the rise of the British Empire.
  • Sherman ant-trust act passed

    The first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices.
  • Wounded knee massacre

    A massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army.
  • Fredrick Jackson Turner writes essay of settling the west

    Perhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner's address to the American Historical Association on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
  • Pullman strike

    Widespread railroad strike and boycott that severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest of the United States.
  • Plessy v Ferguson

    A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality.
  • Holden v hardy

    A US labor law case in which the US Supreme Court held a limitation on working time for miners and smelters as constitutional.
  • Spanish American War begins

    The aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence.
  • Hawaii is annexed

    The Hawaiian Islands were annexed by a joint resolution.
  • Phillipines islands are annexed

    The United States paid Spain $20 million to annex the entire Philippine archipelago.
  • Newlands Reclamation act

    A United States federal law that funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 20 states in the American West.
  • U-boats created

    The Germans created their first models of the U-boat.
  • Panama Canal is built

    An artificial 82 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America.
  • Lochner v New York

    A New York State statute that prescribed maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  • Sinclair’s the Jungle written

    The Jungle is a fictional novel written to expose corruption in government and business in the early 20th century.
  • Pure Food and drug act passed

    Prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce
  • Muller V Oregon

    Women were provided by state mandate lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's.
  • Hepner act

    When it appears by undisputed testimony that a defendant has committed an offense against those sections, the trial judge may direct a verdict in favor of the government.
  • Founding of the NAACP

    An interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans
  • 17th adm

    Allows voters to cast direct votes for U.S. senators.
  • Federal Reserve act

    Created the Federal Reserve System, known simply as "The Fed."
  • Ford Motor company's first full assembly line starts

    The Ford Motor Company team decided to try to implement the first full moving assembly line in the automobile manufacturing process.
  • Clayton Antitrust act

    Prohibits price discrimination; the act of selling the same product to different buyers and charging different prices based on who is purchasing the goods.
  • Beginning of the first world war

    Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, beginning World War I.
  • Lusitania Sunk

    The RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War.
  • US enters WWI

    The U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany.
  • Selective Service act

    Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which authorized the Federal Government to temporarily expand the military through conscription.
  • WWI ends

    After more than four years of horrific fighting WWI ended
  • 18th adm

    Prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors".
  • 19 adm

    The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
  • National origins act

    A federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.
  • Immigration quota act

    Limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota.
  • Scopes trial

    Prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school, which a recent bill had made illegal.