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an American company and corporate trust that was the industrial empire of John D. Rockefeller and associates, controlling almost all oil production, processing, marketing, and transportation in the United States. -
Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between North American Indians and representatives of the U.S. government. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux -
In the late nineteenth century, a new American political party sprung up to defend the interests of farmers. -
the era of yellow journalism was influential both in galvanizing action toward social reform to correct problems exposed by their reports, and in generating concern for standards of objectivity and accuracy in reporting. The media wields power in society, and whether it is for good or ill depends on the ethics and motivations of those involved—with freedom comes responsibility and the press are responsible to contribute to the improvement of society. -
Grandfather clauses were statutes that many Southern states implemented in the 1890s and early 1900s to prevent Black Americans from voting.
Since most Black people in the U.S. were enslaved prior to the 1860s and did not have the right to vote, grandfather clauses prevented them from voting even after they had won their freedom. -
The Spanish–American War was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. -
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay negotiated the peace treaty with representatives of King George III of Great Britain. In the Treaty of Paris, the British Crown formally recognized American independence and ceded most of its territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States, doubling the size of the new nation and paving the way for westward expansion. -
On September 6, 1901, the popular President William McKinley was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, while his Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, was in Vermont at a speaking engagement. Over the next eight days, McKinley’s health condition varied until he died on September 14. -
The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was a piece of U.S. legislation, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt on June 30, 1906, that prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and derived products as food and ensured sanitary slaughtering and processing of livestock. -
On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal was opened to traffic. Panama later pushed to revoke the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, and in 1977 U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos signed a treaty to turn over the canal to Panama by the end of the century. -
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the direct election of United States senators in each state. -
began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. -
In a speech to Congress on 8 January 1918, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) presented the “Fourteen Points,” the last of which called for a general association of nations to be formed to afford “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”
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The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. -
The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. ... The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, though it did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol. -
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest. -
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923 -
The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was a plan in 1924 that successfully resolved the issue of World War I reparations that Germany had to pay. ... The plan provided for an end to the Allied occupation, and a staggered payment plan for Germany's payment of war reparations. -
The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” With local businessman George Rappleyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense -
On May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh completed the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight in history, flying his Spirit of St. Louis from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France.
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Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrant anarchists found guilty of first-degree murder and were convicted of murdering a guard and a paymaster during the April 15, 1920, armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. -
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945 -
Huey Long unveiled his “Share Our Wealth” plan (also known as Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" plan), a program designed to provide a decent standard of living to all Americans by spreading the nation’s wealth among the people. -
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as strikes. Central to the act was a ban on company unions. -
The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law was part of Roosevelt's New Deal domestic program. -
On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms. -
In mid-December 1940, Roosevelt introduced a new policy initiative whereby the United States would lend, rather than sell, military supplies to Great Britain for use in the fight against Germany. Payment for the supplies would be deferred, and could come in any form Roosevelt deemed satisfactory. -
The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration issued during World War II (1939-45) by the United States and Great Britain that set out a vision for the postwar world. First announced on August 14, 1941, a group of 26 Allied nations eventually pledged their support by January 1942. -
As the U.S. military recruited young men for service, civilians were called upon to do their part by buying War bonds, donating to charity, or, if they worked in industry, going that extra mile for the troops. Patriotic appeals were communicated through posters, music, magazine ads, and other printed media, and contributors received buttons and pins to wear with pride. We hope you enjoy this selection of memorabilia from Smithsonian museums. -
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. -
Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz—the largest killing center and concentration camp complex—in January 1945. American forces liberated concentration camps including Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. -
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. -
It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. ... This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified. -
Ronald Wilson Reagan (/ˈreɪɡən/ RAY-gən; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989 and became a highly influential voice of modern conservatism. -
On May 1, 2011, American soldiers killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at his compound near Islamabad, Pakistan. Intelligence officials believe bin Laden was responsible for many deadly acts of terrorism, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He had been on the FBI’s “most wanted” list for more than a decade. -
The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations calling for democracy, free speech and a free press in China. They were halted in a bloody crackdown, known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, by the Chinese government on June 4 and 5, 1989. -
Clinton was elected president in 1992, defeating incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush. At age 46, he became the third-youngest president in history. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history.
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