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On October 12th, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered mainland America. Originally, he was searching for routes to China and India, however, he found the America's instead. Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Spain funded his exploration in hopes that they would achieve greater status.
While he's credited for 'discovering' America, he was not the first out of Europeans to find the America's. This goes to Viking explorer Leif Erikson in 1000 A.D, nearly 500 years before Colombus. -
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Founded in 1607 Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It was the Virgina Company of London's third attempt to start a trade center in the Americas after the failures of the Roanoke Colony and the Popham Colony. -
The French and Indian war (1754-1763) was a territory dispute between French and British colonial powers, primarily over the Ohio River Valley. Both sides had alliances with the Native American's, the French had a better relationship with them giving them a better start. On February 10th, 1763, the French and Indian war ended when the Treaty of Paris was signed. The treaty declared that the French had to give up all territory in mainland North America, excluding New Orleans and environs. -
The Boston Tea Party was a protest in which 60 American citizens dumped 342 crates of tea belonging to the British East India Company into the Boston Harbor while dressed as Mohawk Indians. The cause for the Boston Tea Party was a 3% tax on tea and the colonial government's control over the colonies. -
On the night of the April 18th, 1775, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith ordered British troops to march from Boston to Concord to seize military supplies. The first confrontation was at Lexington where 77 militia men went up against 700 British soldiers, the colonists were soon overwhelmed, and the battle resulted in 8 colonists dying. The second confrontation was at Concord; they were met with a larger militia and were pushed back and forced to retreat to Boston. -
On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independance was approved by the Continental Congress which announced the separation of the 13 Colonies from British rule. The initial vote for independence took place on July 2nd, and the Declaration of Independance was signed on August 2nd, 1776. -
The Battle of Yorktown was the final battle in the American Revolution between George Washington and Lafayette against British General Cornwallis. The Americans marched their troops on the south of Yorktown while the French held the sea. The siege lasted three weeks in which the French and Americans laid siege to Cornwallis's forces. -
The Constitutional Convention was a meeting held on whether or not the Articles of Confederation should be replaced with an official nationwide constitution. It ran from May 25th, through September 17th, 1787. -
The cotton gin was a machine made to clean cotton of it's seeds. The inventor was Eli Whitney. -
The Alien and Sedition Acts was a set of four laws aimed at restricting immigration and limiting press freedoms. -
The Louisiana territory was purchased from France by United States president Thomas Jefferson. It sat at 828,000 square miles and was purchased for $15 million dollars, which nowadays is between $340 to $371 million dollars. -
The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and Great Britian over the Royal Navy forcibly recruiting American Sailors and claiming they were British deserters, as well as British violations of U.S maritime rights. The war began June 18th 1812 and lasted until February 17th, 1815 when the Treaty of Ghent was ratified. -
The Missouri Compromise was a federal bill passed to appease the north which wanted to prevent the expansion of slavery and the south which wanted to expand it. It declared Maine as a free state and Missouri a slave state. -
The election of 1828 paved the way for modern political parties. While Andrew Jackson won the 1828 election and became the 7th president of the United States he also ran in the election of 1824, where he received the most electoral and popularity votes, but lost to John Quincy Adams. His loss in 1824 created National Republicans, who were supporters of John Quincy Adams, and Democratic republicans-now just known as Democrats- who were supporters of Andrew Jackson. -
The inventor of the electric telegraph was Samual Morse, American inventor and painter. He first conceived the idea of the telegraph in 1932, he began working on it that year and made a working model between the years of 1832 and 1837. In 1838 he presented it to congress, and the first telegraph message was sent in 1844. -
The cause of The Panic of 1837 had four factors: The collapse in cotton prices, rapid inflation, the Specie Circular in 1836 which ordered that all land sales must be in Specie, and not paper money, and the last major reason was the lack of a national bank because Andrew Jackson vetoed the bank's renewal in the bank war of 1819, leaving the United States without a national bank starting in 1836. -
The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of the indigenous people of the eastern woodlands. Military records suggest that 100,000 natives were displaced and around 15,000 died on the trail. The tribes relocated included people from the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole nations. -
The Mexican-American war was a conflict between Mexico and the United States, it began April 25th, 1846 and ended February 2nd, 1848. The cause for the war was the annexation of Texas ended on the Nueces river (Mexican territory), or the Rio Grande, (American territory). The war resulted in the United States claiming over 500,000 square miles, extending from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean. -
The Compromise of 1850: a series of laws made by U.S senator Henry Clay and passed by congress so resolve the issue on whether or not western states should permit slavery. The crisis started when California requested to join the union as a free state in December of 1849. -
On April 12th, 1861, at 4:03 am, the Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter. This act began the American Civil War, and although the Civil War was the most bloody war in United States history the attack claimed no lives. -
Emancipation Proclamation, a document issued by U.S President Abraham Lincoln that declared that all enslaved people in Confederate states were to be freed. Although it was issued in January of 1863, it took two years before it reached the enslaved communities of Texas. On June 19th, 1865 the news arrived, today it's known as Juneteenth or Emancipation day. -
After the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse, Confederate General Robert E. Lee met with United States president Ulysses S. Grant before surrendering to the Union. This marked the beginning of the end of the Civil War. -
Just days after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by confederate sympathizer John Wilks Booth. He died the next morning and the search that ensued looking for Booth was the largest manhunt to the date. -
Passed on January 31st, and ratified December 6th, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. -
Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln died and was tasked with rebuilding the south after the Civil War. However, he soon fell out of favor when he breached Tenure of Office Act by removing Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, from the cabinet. He was brought to trial on February 24th, 1868, but in the end, he was acquitted in a vote of 35 guilty to 19 not guilty; just one vote short of what was needed to convict. -
The Fourteenth Amendment extended the rights of previously enslaved individuals and is considered one of the Reconstruction Amendments. -
The Standard Oil Company was founded by John D. Rockefeller. He controlled nearly all production, processing, marketing, and distribution of oil. -
Ratified on February 3rd, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment stated that the right to vote could not be denied based on 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' -
The invention of the telephone was marked when Alexander Graham Bell patented the device on February 2nd, 1876. Then, on March 7th, 1876, Bell gave his first successful demonstration of the telephone. -
In 1879 Thomas Eddison patented the electric light bulb, then a year later in 1880 began commercializing his light bulb. However, in 1835, the first constant electric light was demonstrated. -
The Homestead Strike was a violent dispute between Carnegie Steel Company and it's labors. Groups involved in the fight were: company management, agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, strikebreakers (replacement workers), against the Amalgamation Association of Iron and Steel workers. A gun battle was fought and a number of both Pinkerton agents and Strike workers were killed and many were injured. -
The Pullman Strike lasted from May 11th through July 20th, 1894. It was a widespread railroad boycott in the Midwest, and disrupted rail traffic from June-July 1894. The cause for the strike was a response to cut workers and a decrease in salary by 25 percent.
Because of this many of the families of railway workers faced starvation, however, the president of the company refused to meet with the workers. The workers then voted to go on strike, and walked out of their jobs on May 11th. -
The Spanish-American war (April 21st-August 19th, 1898) was fought over Cuban independence, American newspapers highlighted the atrocities against Cubans from the Spanish which raised humanitarian concerns and fueled the public's desire for intervention. The war ended with Spain giving the United States Sovereignty over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. -
After the assassination of President William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest President in United States history at 42. His presidency brought many things to the United States, such as the Panama Canal and the U.S Forest System. In 1908 he brought state leaders and scientists to the white house to discuss forest conservation. In the end, 41 states created conservation commissions and the National Conservation Commission was established. -
In 1903 the Wright Brothers successfully made first self-sustained flight. The flight lasted twelve seconds, and flew twenty feet, and had a height of 120 feet.