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Aug 3, 1492
The Discovery of America
Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos on August 3, 1492. His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia (the Indies) where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. -
The French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. -
The Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. -
The Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
The American Revolution
The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which the Thirteen American Colonies broke from the British Empire and formed an independent nation, the United States of America. -
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the usual name of a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. -
The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles (2,144,000 square kilometers or 529,920,000 acres) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. -
The Lewis and Clark Expedition
The expedition was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, consisting of a select group of U.S. Army volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. -
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and Great Britain and lasted from 1812 to 1815. Resulting from American anger over trade issues, impressment of sailors, and British support of Indian attacks on the frontier, the conflict saw the US Army attempt to invade Canada while British forces attacked south. -
The Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo, which took place in Belgium on June 18, 1815, marked the final defeat of French military leader and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who conquered much of continental Europe in the early 19th century. -
The Missouri Compromise
In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
The Civil War
The war began when Confederate warships bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. The war ended in Spring, 1865. Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. -
The Emancipation Proclimation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." -
The Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. -
The Gettysburg Address
Teh Gettysburg Address was the world-famous speech delivered by President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication (Nov. 19, 1863) of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa., the site of one of the decisive battles of the American Civil War (July 1–3, 1863). -
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44 caliber Derringer, percussion-cap pistol, during a performance of “Our American Cousin,” at Ford’s Theater in Washington D. C. He then leaped to the stage, breaking his left fibula, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and may have shouted, “The South is avenged!” -
The Franco Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War (19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871) was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. -
The Dawes Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887), adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. -
The Battle of Wounded Knee
The battle between U.S. military troops and Lakota Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota on December 29, 1890, resulted in the deaths of perhaps 300 Sioux men, women, and children. The massacre at Wounded Knee was the last major battle of the Indian Wars of the late 19th century. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party — History.com This Day in History — 12/16/1773. December 16. Lead Story. In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
