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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)
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945
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On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.
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Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating. This caused US to join WWII
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North Korean forces surprised the South Korean army (and the small U.S. force stationed in the country), and quickly headed toward the capital city of Seoul
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Sputnik, the first satellite launched by the USSR fueled the space race between the U.S and USSR
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Declaring that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-sponsored segregation
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible.
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Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin
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Winning one of the closest elections in U.S. history, Republican challenger Richard Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey
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In Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fire their weapons at a group of antiwar demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another
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The Watergate crisis begins when four men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. on the same day that Okinawa is returned from U.S. control back to Japan.
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An accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania occurs when a partial core meltdown is recorded
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he Iran Hostage Crisis begins when sixty-three Americans are among ninety hostages taken at the American embassy in Tehran by three thousand militant student followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, who demand that the former shah return to Iran to stand trial.
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The inauguration of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States occurs in Washington, D.C. It was followed by the release of the fifty-two Americans still held hostage in Tehran
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It bars the United States Congress from giving itself a midterm or retroactive pay raise
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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect, creating a free trade zone between Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
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Hillary Clinton wins a seat for the United States Senate from New York. It is the first time a former First Lady wins public office.
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Islamic fundamentalist terrorists hijack four U.S. airliners and crash them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City.
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Barack Obama takes the oath of office for President of the United States, becoming the first African-American president in the history of the nation
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Osama Bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and other locations and leader of the terrorist group, Al-Queda, is killed after ten years of pursuit by United States and coalition forces during a raid by U.S. Navy Seals on his hideout location in Pakistan.
