Important Dates in American History
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c1000: Vikings establish settlements in what is now L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada.
1492: Christopher Columbus lands in what is now the Bahamas.
1507: The word “America” is first applied to the new world, named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
1513: Spanish found a colony at St. Augustine, Florida.
1519-1521: Spanish conquistadors conquer the Aztecs.
1542: Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo explores the California coast.
1570: Five nations (later six) of Iroquois form a confederacy.
1580s: The slave trade begins as millions of Africans are shipped to the Americas.
1590: The English colony of Roanoke vanishes.
1604: French settlers begin to establish colonies in Canada.
1607: The English build a settlement in Jamestown, Virginia.
1607: Pocahontas saves the life of John Smith.
1620: Carrying English pilgrims, the Mayflower arrives in what is now Massachusetts.
1624: The Dutch settle in New Amsterdam, now called New York.
1675: King Philip’s War.
1682: William Penn founds the colony of Pennsylvania.
1692: Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts.
1699: The French create the colony of Louisiana.
1733: The British have 13 American colonies.
1754: The French and Indian War.
1759: Benjamin Franklin invents the lightning conductor.
1759: British troops capture Quebec from the French.
1765: British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, taxing the colonists.
1770: The Bloody Massacre.
1773: The Boston Tea Party, angry colonists dressed as Indians dump English tea into Boston Harbor.
1775-1783: American Revolution.
July 1776: The 13 colonies sign the Declaration of Independence.
1778: France joins the Americans in their war against Britain.
1780: Benjamin Franklin invents bifocal lenses.
1787: The U.S. Constitution is written.
1789: George Washington becomes the first president of the United States of America.
1792: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin.
1793: Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.
1804: Slavery is made illegal in the northern states of the United States of America.
1806: Robert Fulton invents the steamboat.
1807: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explore the Missouri Valley.
1812: War of 1812 is waged between the Americans and the British.
1820-1860: The Underground Railroad saves thousands of slaves from slavery.
1820: The Missouri Compromise admits Missouri and Maine to the union.
1823: The Monroe Doctrine discourages European colonialism in the Americas.
1825: The community of New Harmony is established.
1831: Nat Turner’s Rebellion.
1835: Samuel Colt introduces the first revolver.
1836: Battle of the Alamo leads to the independent Republic of Texas.
1838-1839: The forced removal of American Indians, especially Cherokees, from their homeland, the “Trail of Tears”.
1848: Mexican-American War leads to annexation of what is now the southwestern United States.
1848: The Seneca Falls Convention.
1848: Gold is found in California, setting off a massive influx of settlers.
1850: Congress passes the Compromise of 1850, temporarily keeping the union intact.
1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe writes Uncle Tom’s Cabin, galvanizing support for the abolitionists.
1859: The abolitionist John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry.
1860: Abraham Lincoln becomes President of the United States.
1860-1890: Native Americans fight the U.S. army for land.
April 1861: Civil War breaks out.
1862: The Homestead Act encourages settling of the western territories.
1863: The Battle of Gettysburg.
1863-1865: Union armies destroy many southern towns.
1865: With the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery is made illegal throughout the United States.
April 9, 1865: General Lee surrenders at Appomattox. The Civil War ends one month later.
April 14, 1865: Lincoln is murdered; Andrew Johnson becomes president.
1868: Fighting over Reconstruction leads to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
1869: The transcontinental railroad is completed.
1875: The Red River War.
1876: Native Americans defeat Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1877: The Nez Perce War.
1879: Thomas Alva Edison perfects the electric light bulb.
1879: Construction begins on the Panama Canal.
1881: President James Garfield is assassinated; Chester Arthur becomes president.
1885: George Eastman introduces photographic film.
1886: Geronimo surrenders.
1890: Native Americans are defeated at Wounded Knee.
1894: The Pullman Strike.
1898: Spanish-American War leads to the overseas expansion of the United States.
1901: President William McKinley is assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
1903: Boston beats Pittsburgh in the first ever World Series.
1903: Wright brothers invent the airplane.
1903: Panama Canal declared independence.
1903: First movie, The Great Train Robbery, is played.
1905: Construction begins on the Panama Canal.
1906: Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a treaty between Russia and Japan.
1906: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle raises awareness of the food industry.
1906: A large earthquake strikes San Francisco, more than 500 people die.
1906: “Typhoid Mary”, the most famous typhoid carrier, is discovered.
1908: Ford Model T mass-produced automobile is introduced.
1909: The NAACP is founded.
1911: A fire in the Asch Building kills 146 employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.
1912: British ocean liner, The Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic.
1914: World War I, called the Great War, begins.
1914: Allied armies halt the Germans at the Battle of Marne.
1915: A German torpedo sinks the passenger ship The Lusitania.
1917: The United States joins World War I.
1918: After the Bolshevik revolution, Russia makes peace with Germany.
Nov 11, 1918: World War I ends as Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles.
1920: The first radio stations are set up in the United States.
1920: The 19th Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote.
1920-1933: The Prohibition makes alcohol illegal in the United States.
1925: Clarence Birdseye perfects the frozen food process.
1927: Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic Ocean.
1927: The Jazz Singer is the first movie with sound.
1928: Jacob Schick invents the electric razor.
Oct 24, 1929: The Wall Street Crash, setting off the Great Depression.
1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes president, a title he keeps until his death in 1945.
1933: Roosevelt launches the New Deal.
Sept. 3, 1939: World War II begins as Britain and France declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland.
April-June 1940: Hitler occupies most of Western Europe.
June 22, 1941: Hitler invades the Soviet Union; U.S. issues $40 million in credit to the Soviet Union.
Dec 7, 1941: Japanese bombers attack US ships at Pearl Harbor.
1942: U.S. government forces 110,000 Californians of Japanese decent into remote interment camps.
1943: British and U.S. forces invade Italy.
June 6, 1944: D-Day, the greatest military invasion in history.
May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders.
July 16, 1945: Scientists in the Manhattan Project successfully detonate the world’s first atomic bomb.
Aug 6, 1945: Hiroshima is decimated by an atomic bomb. Two days later, a second atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.
Aug 14, 1945: Japan surrenders, ending World War II.
1945: The United Nations is set up to encourage peace and to protect human rights.
1946: The ENIAC computer is built.
1947: The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan are drawn up, attempting to limit the spread of communism.
1948: Israel is created.
1949: Germany is divided into democratic West Germany and communist East Germany.
1949: NATO is formed with twelve charter nations.
1950: The Korean War begins.
1953: “Crazy Man, Crazy” by Bill Haley becomes the first rock & roll hit song.
1953: The Korean War ends.
1954: The Supreme Court orders school desegregation.
1955: Communist Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union sign the Warsaw Pact.
1955: Rosa Parks triggers the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1956: Elvis croons his first hit song “Heartbreak Hotel.”
1957: Initiating the space race, the Soviet Union launches Sputnik I.
1958: Jack Kilby makes the first microchip at Texas Instruments laboratories.
1960: Theodore Maiman invents the laser.
1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to travel in space.
1961: The Berlin Wall is built.
1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis.
1962: The satellite Telstar sends a TV image across the Atlantic.
Nov. 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes president.
1963: Spearheading the women’s rights movement, Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique.
1964-1965: Civil rights laws are passed in the United States.
1964: The Beatles arrive in America.
1965: Medicare goes into effect.
1965: Members of the Nation of Islam assassinate Malcolm X.
1966: Betty Friedan founds the National Organization for Women (NOW).
1966: Led by Cesar Chavez, the NFWA stages a farmworkers strike.
1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court Justice.
1968: North Vietnamese launch the Tet Offensive, leading to widespread disapproval of the war in America.
1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN.
1968: Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy is shot and killed in Los Angeles.
1968: Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellancourt found the American Indian Movement.
1969: The computer network ARPANET is set up, the precursor to the Internet.
July 20, 1969: Apollo 11 reaches the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin make the first moon landing.
1969: Over 500,000 attend the Woodstock Music Festival.
1970: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is established.
1972: President Richard Nixon visits China to improve relations.
1973: Watergate hearings in Congress begin investigating Nixon and his staff.
1974: Nixon resigns. Gerald Ford becomes president.
1977: The first Apple II home computer is sold.
1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War kills tens of thousands on both sides but ends only in a stalemate.
1981: Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1981: Music Television (MTV) debuts with round-the-clock music programming.
1981: IBM launches the first personal computer.
1984: AIDS virus is discovered.
1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes after lift-off, killing seven astronauts.
1991: The First Gulf War ensues as U.S. forces remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
1991: The Cold War ends.
1992: The verdict in the Rodney King beating case ignites riots in South Los Angeles.
1993: ATF agents storm the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
1993: Middle East Peace Accord signed by Israel and the PLO.
1994: An earthquake measuring 6.7 rocks Southern California, killing fifty-five people.
1995: A truck bomb destroys the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
1998: Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski is sentenced to life in prison.
1999: President Clinton keeps his job as the U.S. Senate votes against impeachment.
1999: Scientists succeed in cloning the first human embryo.
2002: SARS epidemic (severe acute respiratory syndrome) began in China.
October 24, 2003: Final Concorde Flight from New York to London.