us history timeline

  • 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. It was the longest production run of any automobile model in history until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.
  • The Zimmerman Telegram

    The Zimmermann Telegram was an internal diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico
  • The WWI Armistice

    On Nov. 11, 1918, fighting in World War I came to an end following the signing of an armistice between the Allies and Germany that called for a ceasefire effective at 11 a.m.– it was on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month
  • 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. At the time the U.S. was founded, its female citizens did not share all of the same rights as men, including the right to vote.
  • Charles Lindbergh’s Flight

    Charles Augustus Lindbergh-Overview.
    Lindbergh, Charles Augustus (1902-1974), an American aviator, made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. Other pilots had crossed the Atlantic before him. But Lindbergh was the first person to do it alone nonstop.
  • Black Thursday

    Black Thursday is the name given to Thursday, Oct. 24, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 11% at the open in very heavy volume, precipitating the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s.
  • Hitler becomes chancellor

    On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. The supposed one thousand year Reich had started. But it would be another nineteen months before Hitler achieved absolute power. 1932 Germany saw the rise of the Nazi party into a prominent political force.
  • The New Deal

    Great Depression Leads to a New Deal for the American People. On March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address before 100,000 people on Washington's Capitol Plaza.
  • The Munich Pact

    A deal was reached on 29 September, and at about 1:30 am on 30 September 1938, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Édouard Daladier signed the Munich Agreement.
  • Hitler Invades Poland

    The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion.
  • Pearl Harbor

    The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and hence protect Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, where it sought access to natural resources such as oil and rubber.
  • D-Day

    The Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II.
  • Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    A uranium gun-type atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a plutonium implosion-type bomb (Fat Man) on the city of Nagasaki on August 9.
  • The formation of United Nations

    The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization established 24 October 1945, to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was created following the Second World War to prevent another such conflict.
  • The Long Telegram

    Kennan responded on February 22, 1946, by sending a lengthy 5,500-word telegram (sometimes cited as being more than 8,000 words) from Moscow to Secretary of State James Byrnes outlining a new strategy for diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
  • The formation of NATO

    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere.
  • Russians acquire the Atomic Bomb

    Greatly aided by its successful Soviet Alsos and the atomic spies, the Soviet Union conducted its first weapon test of an implosion-type nuclear device, RDS-1, codenamed First Lightning, on 29 August 1949, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR.
  • The Korean War

    Armed forces from communist North Korea smash into South Korea, setting off the Korean War. The United States, acting under the auspices of the United Nations, quickly sprang to the defense of South Korea and fought a bloody and frustrating war for the next three years.
  • Brown v Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
  • The Vietnam War

    Vietnam War, (1954–75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
  • 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 ended peacefully -- the Soviet Union withdrew the warheads in exchange for Kennedy pulling its own missiles from Turkey -- but came awfully close to sparking World War III, a threat that forever changed Americans' perceptions of the Cold War.
  • JFK’s Assassination

    Most importantly, 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

    Lunar Landing Mission. Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. The astronauts also returned to Earth the first samples from another planetary body.
  • The Watergate Break-ins

    January 30, 1973: Former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. are convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. Five other men plead guilty, but mysteries remain.
  • Nixon’s Resignation

    Image result for Nixon’s Resignation date
    On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency of the United States after what has become known as the Watergate scandal. In June of 1972, five men were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate complex
  • The invention of the Internet

    ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web
  • The Fall of the Berlin Wall

    The Berlin Wall was torn down due to political changes in Europe; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev lost his control by 1990, and the Soviet Union fell apart. Many people were affected by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The East Germans could now be free to travel west and be free.
  • 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.