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Event 1 1920s and Prohibition
Germany and the Allies sign an armistice to end the fighting in World War I. -
Event 2 1920s and Prohibition
Congress ratifies the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcohol anywhere in the United States. -
Event 4 1920s and Prohibition
In Paris, diplomats representing the combatant nations of World War I sign the Treaty of Versailles, which promises to sustain peace through the creation of the League of Nations but also plants the seed of future conflict by imposing mercilessly stiff reparations upon Germany. -
Event 3 1920s and Prohibition
In Seattle, local trade unionists affiliated with both the mainstream American Federation of Labor and the radical Industrial Workers of the World organize a general strike, halting economic activity in the city for five days. The strike ultimately fails when workers, threatened with state violence and undermined by their own cautious labor leaders, return to their jobs. -
Event 6 1920s and Prohibition
Cotton prices at New Orleans peak at 42 cents a pound, prompting Southern farmers to plant the largest crop in history. The resulting overproduction causes a collapse in prices, with cotton falling to less than 10 cents a pound by early 1921. Cotton farmers will toil in near-depression conditions throughout most of the 1920s and 30s. -
Event 5 1920s and Prohibition
The Palmer Raids begin, launching a period of intense government persecution of radical political dissidents in response to the postwar Red Scare sweeping the nation. -
Event 7 1920s and Prohibition
The 19th Amendment is ratified, granting women the right to vote. -
Event 8 1920s and Prohibition
Congress passes the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, sharply raising tariff duties to protect the American market for American manufactures. The tariff boosts the domestic economy of the Roaring '20s, but it also worsens the crisis for struggling European economies like Germany's, helping to enable Adolf Hitler's rise to power there on a platform of economic grievance. -
Event 10 1920s and Prohibition
The American stock market collapses, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks in September 1929 at 381.17—a level that it won't reach again until 1954. The Dow will bottom out at a Depression-era low of just 41.22 in 1932. -
Event 9 1920s and Prohibition
In the "Saint Valentine's Day Massacre," the single bloodiest incident in a decade-long turf war between rival Chicago mobsters fighting to control the lucrative bootlegging trade, members of Al Capone's gang murder six followers of rival Bugs Moran. -
Event 1 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
Severe drought hits the Midwestern and Southern Plains. As the crops die, the “black blizzards” begin. Dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow. -
Event 3 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
Over 6 million young pigs are slaughtered to stabilize prices. With most of the meat going to waste, public outcry will lead to the creation, in October, of the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation. The FSRC will divert agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products will be distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods are eventually included to clothe the needy as well. -
Event 2 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
When Franklin Roosevelt takes office, the country is in desperate straits. He will take quick steps to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress will come up with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which stabilizes the banking industry and restores people’s faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind it. -
Event 4 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
In California’s San Joaquin Valley, where many farmers fleeing the plains have gone seeking migrant farm work, the largest agricultural strike in America’s history begins. More than 18,000 cotton workers with the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU ) strike for 24 days. During the strike, two men and one woman are killed and hundreds injured. In the settlement, the union is recognized by growers, and workers are given a 25 percent raise. -
Event 5 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
Great dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely. -
Event 7 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
The “Yearbook of Agriculture” for 1934 announces, “Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production…. 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil….” -
Event 6 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to 140 million acres of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing districts that will be carefully monitored.
This same day, the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act is approved. This act restricts the ability of banks to dispossess farmers in times of distress. Originally effective until 1938, the act will be renewed four times until 1947, when it will expire. -
Event 8 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
The federal government forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities. The DRS buys cattle in counties that are designated emergency areas, for $14 to $20 a head. Those unfit for human consumption – more than 50 percent at the beginning of the program – are destroyed. The remaining cattle are given to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. -
Event 9 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
FDR’s Shelterbelt Project begins. The project calls for large-scale planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas, to protect the land from erosion. Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, are planted along fence rows separating properties, and farmers and workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps are paid to plant and cultivate them. The project is estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a period of 12 years. -
Event 10 Great Depression and Dust Bowel
In the fall, the rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought. During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat. -
Event 1 1960s and public protests
February 1, 1960 - Four black college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter, protesting their denial of service. This action caused a national campaign, waged by seventy-thousand students, both white and black, over the next eight months, in sit-ins across the nation for Civil Rights. -
Event 2 1960s and public protest
The 1960 census includes a United States population of 179,323,175, an 18.5% increase since 1950. For the first time, two states, New York and California have over fifteen million people within their borders. The geographic center of the United States is located six and one half miles northwest of Centralia, Illinois. -
Event 3 1960s and public protest
In the Soviet Union, a United States U-2 reconnaissance plane is shot done by Soviet forces, leading to the capture of U.S. pilot Gary Powers and the eventual cancellation of the Paris summit conference. On August 19, Powers is sentenced by the Soviet Union to ten years in prison for espionage. On February 10, 1962 , he would be exchanged for a captured Soviet spy in Berlin. -
Event 4 1960s and public protests
The presidential race to succeed two term president Dwight D. Eisenhower won by Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate from Massachusetts, over incumbent Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy was a narrow victor in the popular vote, by slightly more than 120,000 votes, but won a more substantial victory in the Electoral College tally, 303 to 219. 62.8% of the voting age population took part in the contest. -
Event 5 1960s and public protests
Lt. Colonel John Glenn becomes the first U.S. astronaut in orbit in the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. He would circle the earth three times before returning to earth, remaining aloft for four hours and fifty-five minutes. This flight equalized the space race with the Soviet Union, whose Vostok I flight on April 12, 1961 with Yuri Gagarin had become the first manned spaceflight into orbit one year earlier. -
Event 6 1960s and public protests
The Cuban Missile Crises begins. In response to the Soviet Union building offensive missiles in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy orders a naval and air blockade of military equipment to the island. An agreement is eventually reached with Soviet Premier Khrushchev on the removal of the missiles, ending the potential conflict after thirty-eight days, in what many think was the closest the Cold War came to breaking into armed conflict. -
Event 7 1960s and public protests
An omnibus legislation in the U.S. Congress on Civil Rights is passed. It banned discrimination in jobs, voting and accommodations. -
Event 8 1960s and public protests
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two significant portions of the act; the outlawing of the requirement of potential voters to take a literacy test in order to qualify and the provision of federal registration of voters in areas with less than 50% of all voters registered. -
Event 9 1960s and public protests
The first public burning of a draft card occurs in protest to the Vietnam War. It is coordinated by the anti-war group of students, National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. -
Event 10 1960s and public protests
The Internet, called Arpanet during its initial development, is invented by the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the U.S. Department of Defense. The first operational packet switching network in the world was deployed connecting the IMP at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, it included the entire four node system, with the UCSB and the University of Utah.