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The invention of the Model T
On October 1, 1908, the first production Model T Ford is completed at the company's Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build some 15 million Model T cars. -
The Zimmerman Telegram
On January 16, 1917, British code breakers intercepted an encrypted message from Zimmerman intended for Heinrich von Eckardt, the German ambassador to Mexico. The Germans would provide military and financial support for a Mexican attack on the United States, and in exchange Mexico would be free to annex “lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.” -
The WWI Armistice
The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was an armistice during the First World War between the Allies and Germany – also known as the Armistice of Compiègne after the location in which it was signed – and the agreement that ended the fighting on the Western Front. -
The 19th Amendment
Ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote—a right known as woman suffrage. -
Charles Lindbergh’s Flight
On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh gunned the engine of the "Spirit of St Louis" and aimed her down the dirt runway of Roosevelt Field, Long Island. The crowd of 500 thought they had witnessed a miracle as this happened. Thirty-three and one half-hour and 3,500 miles later he landed in Paris, the first to fly the Atlantic alone. -
Black Thursday
On October 24, 1929, a then-record number of shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange by panicked investors, marking the onset of the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression. -
The New Deal
When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. -
Hitler becomes chancellor
In the hope of creating a stable government, the elderly President Hindenburg agreed to the plan. So on 30 January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. -
The Munich Pact
British and French prime ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier sign the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The agreement averted the outbreak of war but gave Czechoslovakia away to German conquest. -
Hitler Invades Poland
The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. As the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. -
Pearl Harbor
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: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
D-Day
On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which, “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe. -
Hiroshima & Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. -
The formation of United Nations
The United Nations was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. The growing Second World War became the real impetus for the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to begin formulating the original U.N. Declaration, signed by 26 nations in January 1942, as a formal act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers. -
The Long Telegram
In reply, Kennan wrote the Long Telegram outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets; "According to Kennan, the Soviets' view of the world came from a traditional 'Russian sense of insecurity...'" It arrived in Washington on February 22, 1946. -
The formation of NATO
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. The alignment of nearly every European nation into one of the two opposing camps formalized the political division of the European continent that had taken place since World War II (1939-45). -
Russians acquire the Atomic Bomb
On this day in History, Soviets explode atomic bomb on Aug 29, 1949, at a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb,code name “First Lightning.” In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges,and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb.The atomic explosion, which at 20 kilotons was roughly equal to “Trinity,” the first U.S. atomic explosion,and destroyed those structures -
The Korean War
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. -
Brown v Board of Education
On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court’s unanimous decision overturned provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had allowed for “separate but equal” public facilities, including public schools in the United States. -
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued, against the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. -
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. -
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a pivotal moment in the Cold War. Fifty years ago the United States and the Soviet Union stood closer to Armageddon than at any other moment in history. In October 1962 President John F. Kennedy was informed of a U-2 spy-plane's discovery of Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba. -
JFK’s Assassination
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was shot twice, and an hour after his death Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime. -
The 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. -
The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
Now, on the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sit atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The three-stage 363-foot rocket will use its 7.5 million pounds of thrust to propel them into space and into history. -
The Watergate Break-ins
Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters. E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who led the Watergate break-in team, were stationed in a Watergate Hotel room while the burglary was underway. -
The invention of the Internet
Unlike technologies such as the light bulb or the telephone, the Internet has no single “inventor.” Instead, it has evolved over time. The Internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War. For years, scientists and researchers used it to communicate and share data with one another. Today, we use the Internet for almost everything, and for many people it would be impossible to imagine life without it. -
Nixon’s Resignation
The scandal escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support, and on August 9, 1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
The 9/11 Attacks
On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States.Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Often referred to as 9/11, the attacks resulted in extensive death and destruction, triggering major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defining the presidency of George W. Bush.
