United States History
Events · 138
- c. 1000 CEAmerican History
The Norse Reach Vinland
Around the year 1000, Norse seafarers from Greenland reached the northern tip of Newfoundland and built a small settlement, the remains of which were excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows. It is the only confirmed Norse site in the Americas and the first known European presence in the New World.
Reputable source - c. 850–1150 CEAmerican History
The Ancestral Puebloans of Chaco Canyon
In the high desert of what is now New Mexico, the Ancestral Puebloans built Chaco Canyon into a monumental center of a wide Southwestern world. Its multistory 'great houses,' such as Pueblo Bonito with hundreds of rooms, were aligned to the sun and moon and linked by a network of straight roads across the region.
Reputable source - c. 1050–1350 CEAmerican History
Cahokia, North America's First City
Across the Mississippi from present-day St. Louis, the Mississippian people built Cahokia, the largest city in North America north of Mexico. At its peak around 1100 it covered several square miles with some 120 earthen mounds — the greatest, Monks Mound, larger at its base than the Great Pyramid — and a population of perhaps 15,000–20,000, rivaling contemporary London.
Reputable source - before European contactAmerican History
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Great Law of Peace
Five nations of what is now upstate New York — the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca — united under the Great Law of Peace, an oral constitution attributed to the Great Peacemaker and Hiawatha. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy governed itself through a Grand Council of chiefs, with the Tuscarora joining as a sixth nation in the 1700s.
Primary source - October 12, 1492American History
Columbus Reaches the Americas
Sailing west for Spain in search of Asia, Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean on October 12, 1492. He never reached the mainland of North America, but his voyages opened permanent contact between the Old World and the New — and touched off the vast, two-way transfer of people, plants, animals, and diseases known as the Columbian Exchange.
Primary source - September 8, 1565American History
St. Augustine Founded
The Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in Florida in 1565, decades before any lasting English colony. It is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in what is now the continental United States.
Reputable source - 1587–1590American History
The Lost Colony of Roanoke
England's first attempt at a permanent American colony, on Roanoke Island off North Carolina, ended in mystery. When a supply ship returned in 1590, the roughly 115 settlers — including Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America — had vanished, leaving only the carved word 'CROATOAN.'
Reputable source - 1607American History
Jamestown, the first permanent English colony
The Virginia Company established Jamestown on the James River — the first permanent English settlement in North America, surviving famine and conflict.
Reputable source - August 1619American History
The First Africans in Virginia
In late August 1619, an English privateer, the White Lion, landed 'twenty and odd' enslaved Africans — captives from the kingdom of Ndongo in West Central Africa — at Point Comfort, near Jamestown, where they were traded for supplies. They were the first recorded Africans in England's mainland American colonies.
Reputable source - November 1620American History
The Mayflower Compact
Before landing at Plymouth, 41 of the Mayflower's passengers signed a short covenant binding themselves into a 'civil body politic' to make and obey 'just and equal laws' for the good of the colony. The Pilgrims drafted it because, blown off course, they had landed outside the jurisdiction of their charter.
Primary source - 1692American History
The Salem Witch Trials
In colonial Massachusetts, a wave of witchcraft accusations gripped Salem Village. Special courts tried some 200 people; 20 were executed — 19 hanged and one pressed to death — before the panic collapsed and officials later admitted the trials had been a grievous error.
Reputable source - 1730s–1740sAmerican History
The Great Awakening
A wave of fervent religious revival swept the colonies, as preachers like Jonathan Edwards and the itinerant George Whitefield drew huge, emotional crowds and called for a personal, heartfelt conversion. Whitefield's tours made him one of the first truly intercolonial celebrities.
Reputable source - 1765American History
The Stamp Act and 'No Taxation Without Representation'
Parliament's 1765 Stamp Act taxed nearly all printed materials in the colonies to help pay for the empire's defense. Colonists, who elected no members of Parliament, denounced it as taxation without their consent; the Sons of Liberty organized boycotts and protests, and a Stamp Act Congress petitioned the Crown, forcing the act's repeal in 1766.
Reputable source Taxation Without Representation: The Stamp Act
Deep in debt after the Seven Years' War (the French and Indian War), which ended in 1763, Britain looked to its American colonies for revenue. In 1765 Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring colonists to buy a government stamp for newspapers, legal documents, and other paper goods. Colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, denounced it as taxation without their consent.
Reputable source- March 5, 1770The American Revolution
The Boston Massacre
On the night of 5 March 1770 a crowd taunted and pelted British soldiers stationed near the Old State House in Boston. The soldiers opened fire, killing five colonists, among them Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American descent.
Reputable source - March 5, 1770American History
The Boston Massacre
On March 5, 1770, British soldiers guarding the Boston customs house fired into a jeering, snowball-throwing crowd, killing five colonists — among them Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent often called the first to die for the Revolution. Paul Revere's engraving of the scene spread the story as propaganda.
Reputable source - December 16, 1773American History
The Boston Tea Party
Protesting a tax on tea and the East India Company's monopoly, colonists — some disguised as Mohawks — boarded three ships in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. Britain answered with the punitive 'Intolerable Acts.'
Reputable source - December 16, 1773The American Revolution
The Boston Tea Party
To protest a tax on tea and the monopoly granted to the East India Company, on the night of 16 December 1773 colonists — some disguised as Mohawk people — boarded three ships at Boston's Griffin's Wharf and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
Reputable source The Intolerable Acts and the First Continental Congress
Britain answered the Tea Party with the Coercive Acts of 1774 — called the 'Intolerable Acts' in America — which closed the port of Boston and curtailed Massachusetts self-government. In response, delegates from twelve colonies met in Philadelphia in September 1774 as the First Continental Congress to coordinate resistance and organize a boycott of British goods.
Reputable source- April 19, 1775The American Revolution
Lexington and Concord
On 19 April 1775 British troops marched from Boston to seize colonial arms at Concord. Militia met them at Lexington, where a shot — the 'shot heard round the world' — began the fighting, and again at Concord's North Bridge, from which the British were driven back to Boston under fire.
Reputable source - April 19, 1775American History
Lexington and Concord: the Revolution begins
British troops marching to seize colonial arms met militia at Lexington and Concord — "the shot heard round the world."
Reputable source - June 17, 1775The American Revolution
The Battle of Bunker Hill
On 17 June 1775 British forces assaulted colonial fortifications overlooking Boston, in fighting centered on Breed's Hill. The British eventually took the ground but suffered heavy casualties against the entrenched Americans.
Reputable source - January 1776The American Revolution
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
In January 1776 Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet that in plain, forceful language argued for a complete break from Britain and for a republic in place of monarchy. It sold in enormous numbers across the colonies.
Reputable source - July 4, 1776American History
The Declaration of Independence
The Continental Congress adopted Jefferson's declaration asserting that "all men are created equal" and severing ties with Britain.
Primary source - July 4, 1776The American Revolution
The Declaration of Independence
On 4 July 1776 the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted chiefly by Thomas Jefferson. It proclaimed the thirteen colonies to be free and independent states and asserted that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Primary source - December 1776The American Revolution
Washington Crosses the Delaware
After a demoralizing string of defeats, on the night of 25–26 December 1776 George Washington led the Continental Army across the ice-choked Delaware River in a winter storm and surprised the Hessian garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, the next morning, capturing some 900 soldiers.
Reputable source - October 1777The American Revolution
The Battle of Saratoga
In the autumn of 1777 American forces halted and surrounded a British army under General John Burgoyne in upstate New York. On 17 October 1777 Burgoyne surrendered his entire force — the first surrender of a British army in the war.
Reputable source - Winter 1777–1778The American Revolution
Valley Forge
From December 1777 to June 1778 Washington's army wintered at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, building a camp of some 2,000 huts. Disease, not battle, was the great killer, claiming around 2,000 lives; meanwhile the Prussian officer Baron von Steuben drilled the soldiers into a more disciplined force.
Reputable source - February 6, 1778The American Revolution
The French Alliance
Persuaded by the American victory at Saratoga, France signed a Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States on 6 February 1778, negotiated in part by Benjamin Franklin. France recognized American independence and pledged not to make a separate peace with Britain.
Reputable source - October 19, 1781The American Revolution
The Siege of Yorktown
In the autumn of 1781 Washington's combined American and French armies trapped General Cornwallis's British force on the Yorktown peninsula in Virginia, while a French fleet cut off escape or rescue by sea. After weeks of bombardment, Cornwallis surrendered more than 7,000 men on 19 October 1781.
Reputable source - October 1781American History
Victory at Yorktown
Washington's army and the French fleet trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown; his surrender effectively won the Revolution.
Reputable source - September 3, 1783The American Revolution
The Treaty of Paris
Negotiated by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, the Treaty of Paris was signed on 3 September 1783. In it Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States and agreed to generous boundaries stretching west to the Mississippi River.
Reputable source - September 17, 1787American History
The Constitution is signed
Delegates in Philadelphia signed a new framework of government — federal, divided, and amendable.
Primary source The Constitutional Convention
In the summer of 1787 delegates meeting in Philadelphia — gathered originally to revise the weak Articles of Confederation — instead drafted an entirely new framework of government. Signed on 17 September 1787, the Constitution created a federal republic balancing executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Its provisions on representation and slavery were the product of bitter compromise.
Primary source- April 30, 1789American History
Washington Becomes the First President
George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States in New York City on April 30, 1789. Setting precedents at every turn, he formed a cabinet, kept the young nation out of European wars, and — most consequentially — voluntarily stepped down after two terms.
Reputable source - December 15, 1791American History
The Bill of Rights
To answer critics who feared a too-powerful central government, the first Congress proposed a set of amendments, ten of which were ratified in 1791 as the Bill of Rights. They guarantee freedoms of speech, religion, press, and assembly; the right to bear arms; protections for the accused; and rights reserved to the people and the states.
Primary source The Bill of Rights
To answer fears that the new federal government would trample individual liberties, the First Congress proposed a set of amendments; ten were ratified by the states on 15 December 1791 as the Bill of Rights. They guaranteed freedoms of speech, religion, the press, and assembly, and protections in criminal cases, among other rights.
Primary source- 1803American History
The Louisiana Purchase
Jefferson bought France's claim to 828,000 square miles for $15 million, doubling the country's territory overnight.
Primary source - 1812–1815American History
The War of 1812
Angered by British interference with American shipping and the impressment of U.S. sailors, the United States declared war on Britain in 1812. The conflict saw the British burn Washington, D.C., and the American defense of Fort McHenry inspire 'The Star-Spangled Banner'; it ended in a stalemate with the 1814 Treaty of Ghent.
Reputable source - 1820American History
The Missouri Compromise
To settle a bitter fight over whether new states would allow slavery, Congress in 1820 admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana territory north of latitude 36°30′.
Primary source - 1830s–1838American History
The Trail of Tears
Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw people from their homelands in the Southeast to territory west of the Mississippi. On the Cherokee removal of 1838, thousands died of cold, hunger, and disease along what became known as the Trail of Tears.
Reputable source - February 1848American History
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican Cession
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. Mexico ceded roughly 525,000 square miles — including present-day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of several other states — and the Rio Grande was fixed as the Texas border, in exchange for $15 million.
Primary source - July 1848American History
The Seneca Falls Convention
In July 1848, some 300 people gathered at Seneca Falls, New York, for the first women's rights convention in the United States. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, they issued a Declaration of Sentiments modeled on the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming that 'all men and women are created equal' and demanding, most radically, the right to vote.
Reputable source - 1848–1849American History
The California Gold Rush
The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848 set off a stampede. In 1849 alone, some 90,000 'forty-niners' poured into California from across the country and around the world, and San Francisco exploded from a village into a boomtown. About 300,000 people arrived in a few years.
Reputable source - 1830s–1850sAmerican History
Abolitionists and the Underground Railroad
A growing movement fought to end slavery. Frederick Douglass, who escaped bondage to become the era's most powerful orator and writer, published his own newspaper and demanded immediate emancipation. Harriet Tubman, herself an escapee, returned again and again to the South, guiding dozens of enslaved people to freedom along the secret network of the Underground Railroad.
Reputable source · 2 sources - March 6, 1857American History
The Dred Scott Decision
In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court ruled that Scott, an enslaved man who had lived in free territory, could not sue for his freedom — and, sweepingly, that no person of African descent could be a U.S. citizen and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories.
Primary source - November 6, 1860The American Civil War
The Election of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party, was elected president without carrying a single Southern state. His platform of halting the spread of slavery into the western territories alarmed the slaveholding South.
Reputable source - December 1860 – February 1861The American Civil War
Secession and the Formation of the Confederacy
South Carolina became the first state to secede on December 20, 1860. By February 1, 1861, six more Deep South states had followed, and together they formed the Confederate States of America, choosing Jefferson Davis as president. Four more states seceded after the fighting began.
Reputable source - April 12, 1861The American Civil War
The Firing on Fort Sumter
Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. After a 34-hour bombardment, the garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered the fort.
Reputable source - April 1861American History
The Civil War begins
Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter, opening a four-year war over slavery and union that killed some 750,000 Americans.
Reputable source - July 21, 1861The American Civil War
The First Battle of Bull Run
In the first major battle of the war, near Manassas, Virginia, an untried Union army under Irvin McDowell attacked Confederate forces. A defensive stand by Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson turned the tide, and the Union army retreated in disorder toward Washington.
Reputable source - March 9, 1862The American Civil War
Monitor vs. Virginia: The Ironclads Clash
At Hampton Roads, Virginia, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (built on the hull of the former USS Merrimack) fought the first battle in history between two ironclad warships. The four-hour duel ended in a draw, with cannon shot bouncing off both armored ships.
Reputable source · 2 sources - April 6–7, 1862The American Civil War
The Battle of Shiloh
In southwestern Tennessee, a surprise Confederate attack on Ulysses S. Grant's army was thrown back over two days of ferocious fighting. Around 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing — more than all of America's previous wars combined.
Reputable source - June 25 – July 1, 1862The American Civil War
The Seven Days Battles
As Union General George McClellan closed in on Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign, the newly appointed Robert E. Lee launched a series of attacks that drove the larger Union army back to the James River, saving the Confederate capital.
Reputable source - September 17, 1862The American Civil War
The Battle of Antietam
Near Sharpsburg, Maryland, Lee's first invasion of the North met McClellan's Army of the Potomac. In the single bloodiest day in American history, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing. Lee was forced to withdraw to Virginia.
Reputable source - December 13, 1862The American Civil War
The Battle of Fredericksburg
Union General Ambrose Burnside hurled wave after wave of troops against entrenched Confederates behind a stone wall on the heights above Fredericksburg, Virginia. The assaults were slaughtered; none reached the wall.
Reputable source - January 1, 1863The American Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation
President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all enslaved people in the rebelling states 'are, and henceforward shall be free.' It applied only to Confederate-held areas, not the loyal border states, and it authorized the enlistment of Black men in the Union army and navy.
Primary source - January 1, 1863American History
The Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln declared enslaved people in rebelling states "forever free," transforming the war into a fight against slavery itself.
Primary source - May 1–4, 1863The American Civil War
The Battle of Chancellorsville
Outnumbered nearly two to one, Lee boldly divided his army and sent Stonewall Jackson on a sweeping flank march that crushed the Union right. Often called Lee's greatest victory, the battle came at a terrible cost: Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men.
Reputable source - July 1–3, 1863The American Civil War
The Battle of Gettysburg
Over three days in Pennsylvania, Lee's second invasion of the North was defeated in the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, culminating in the failed assault known as Pickett's Charge. The battle produced some 51,000 casualties — the most of any Civil War battle.
Reputable source - July & November 1863American History
Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address
In July 1863, Union forces turned back Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the bloodiest battle of the war — with some 51,000 casualties over three days. That November, dedicating the battlefield cemetery, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, redefining the war as a struggle for 'a new birth of freedom' and 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.'
Reputable source - July 4, 1863The American Civil War
The Fall of Vicksburg
After a long siege, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered to Grant on July 4, 1863 — the day after Gettysburg ended.
Reputable source - July 18, 1863The American Civil War
The 54th Massachusetts and Black Soldiers
The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first Black regiments raised in the North, led the assault on Fort Wagner outside Charleston, South Carolina. Though the attack failed and their commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, was killed, the regiment's valor was widely celebrated.
Reputable source - November 19, 1863The American Civil War
The Gettysburg Address
At the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg, Lincoln delivered a brief speech of roughly 270 words. In it he cast the war as a test of whether a nation 'conceived in liberty' and dedicated to human equality could endure, and called for 'a new birth of freedom.'
Primary source - November 1863The American Civil War
The Battles for Chattanooga
In late November 1863, Union forces under Grant broke the Confederate siege of Chattanooga, Tennessee, storming Lookout Mountain and the seemingly impregnable heights of Missionary Ridge.
Reputable source - May–June 1864The American Civil War
Grant's Overland Campaign
Now general-in-chief of all Union armies, Grant launched a relentless offensive against Lee in Virginia. Through the bloody battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Grant absorbed enormous casualties but — unlike his predecessors — kept pushing south, pinning Lee's army near Petersburg.
Reputable source - September 2, 1864The American Civil War
The Fall of Atlanta
After a months-long campaign across Georgia, Union General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta, a vital Confederate rail and manufacturing center, on September 2, 1864.
Reputable source - November 8, 1864The American Civil War
Lincoln's Re-election
Running on the National Union ticket against former Union general George McClellan, who ran on a peace platform, Lincoln won re-election decisively, aided by the recent fall of Atlanta and a strong soldier vote.
Reputable source - November – December 1864The American Civil War
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman marched some 60,000 men from Atlanta to the coast at Savannah, cutting loose from his supply lines and waging 'total war' — destroying railroads, factories, farms, and infrastructure across a wide swath of Georgia. He presented the captured city of Savannah to Lincoln as a 'Christmas gift.'
Reputable source - January 31, 1865The American Civil War
The Thirteenth Amendment
Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which declared that 'neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States.' It was ratified by the states in December 1865.
Primary source - April 3, 1865The American Civil War
The Fall of Richmond
After Grant broke through the Petersburg lines on April 2, 1865, the Confederate government fled and its army evacuated, setting fire to warehouses as it left. Union troops entered the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, the next day.
Reputable source - April 9, 1865The American Civil War
Lee's Surrender at Appomattox
With his army surrounded and starving, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Grant offered generous terms, paroling the Confederate soldiers to return home.
Reputable source - April 14, 1865The American Civil War
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Just five days after Appomattox, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln during a performance of 'Our American Cousin' at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Lincoln died the next morning, April 15, 1865.
Reputable source - April 14, 1865American History
Lincoln's Assassination
Days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox effectively ended the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington on the night of April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the next morning — the first American president to be assassinated.
Reputable source - June 19, 1865The American Civil War
Juneteenth
Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people were free — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the war's end. The news finally reached the roughly 250,000 people still enslaved in Texas.
Reputable source - 1865–1877The American Civil War
Reconstruction Begins
With the war over and slavery abolished, the nation faced the vast task of rebuilding the South and defining the place of some four million newly freed people. Congress would pass the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteeing citizenship and voting rights, but Southern 'Black Codes' and violent resistance sought to preserve white supremacy.
Reputable source - December 1865American History
The Thirteenth Amendment Abolishes Slavery
Ratified in December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, except as punishment for crime. It made permanent and universal what the Emancipation Proclamation had begun.
Primary source - 1868 & 1870American History
The Reconstruction Amendments: Citizenship and the Vote
The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and guaranteed them 'equal protection of the laws' and 'due process.' The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) barred denying the vote 'on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,' enfranchising Black men.
Primary source · 2 sources - May 10, 1869American History
The transcontinental railroad
The golden spike at Promontory Summit joined the Central Pacific and Union Pacific — coast to coast in a week instead of months.
Reputable source - 1877American History
The End of Reconstruction
The disputed 1876 presidential election was resolved by the Compromise of 1877: Democrats accepted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president, and in return the last federal troops were withdrawn from the South, ending Reconstruction.
Reputable source - May 4, 1886American History
The Haymarket Affair and the Labor Movement
As American industry boomed, workers organized for shorter hours and better conditions. On May 4, 1886, a rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square in support of the eight-hour workday turned deadly when a bomb was thrown and police opened fire, killing several. In the aftermath, eight labor activists were convicted amid a wave of anti-union hysteria.
Primary source - December 29, 1890American History
The Wounded Knee Massacre
On December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, U.S. soldiers attempting to disarm a band of Lakota opened fire, killing some 250–300 Lakota men, women, and children. It came amid federal fears of the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement of hope among desperate, confined tribes.
Primary source - 1892American History
Ellis Island opens
The immigration station in New York Harbor processed some 12 million arrivals over six decades.
Reputable source - May 18, 1896American History
Plessy v. Ferguson and 'Separate but Equal'
In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring separate railway cars for Black and white passengers, ruling that 'separate but equal' facilities were constitutional. Justice John Marshall Harlan alone dissented, declaring that 'our Constitution is color-blind.'
Primary source - 1898American History
The Spanish-American War
After the battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor, the United States went to war with Spain in 1898. In a matter of months it won a decisive victory and, in the peace, took control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and asserted dominance over Cuba.
Reputable source - December 17, 1903American History
The Wright brothers fly
At Kitty Hawk, Orville Wright flew 120 feet in 12 seconds — the first controlled, powered airplane flight.
Reputable source - April 1917American History
The United States Enters World War I
After German submarines resumed unrestricted attacks on shipping and the intercepted Zimmermann Telegram revealed a German bid to ally with Mexico, the United States declared war in April 1917. Some two million American troops helped tip the balance on the Western Front before the armistice of November 1918.
Reputable source - 1920–1933American History
Prohibition
The Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol nationwide beginning in 1920. Instead of a sober society, Prohibition produced speakeasies, bootleggers, and powerful organized-crime syndicates, and it was repealed in 1933 — the only constitutional amendment ever undone by another.
Reputable source - August 1920American History
Women win the vote
The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, barring states from denying the vote on account of sex after a seventy-year campaign.
Primary source - 1920sAmerican History
The Harlem Renaissance
In the 1920s, the New York neighborhood of Harlem became the center of an extraordinary flowering of African American art, literature, and music. Writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and musicians of the new jazz age, gave powerful expression to Black life, culture, and pride.
Reputable source - October 1929American History
The Crash and the Great Depression
The stock market collapsed; by 1933 a quarter of workers were unemployed, reshaping Americans' relationship with government.
Reputable source - 1933–1939American History
The New Deal
Taking office in 1933 amid the Depression's depths, Franklin Roosevelt launched the New Deal — a torrent of federal programs to provide relief, recovery, and reform. It created Social Security, insured bank deposits, regulated Wall Street, and put millions to work through agencies like the WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Reputable source - December 7, 1941American History
Pearl Harbor
Japan's surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet killed 2,400 Americans and brought the United States into World War II.
Reputable source - February 19, 1942American History
Japanese American Incarceration
In the panic after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced removal and incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese descent — two-thirds of them U.S. citizens — in remote camps for the duration of the war, without charge or trial.
Primary source - June 6, 1944American History
D-Day: The Normandy Invasion
On June 6, 1944, some 156,000 Allied troops stormed five beaches of Nazi-occupied Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion in history, under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite heavy casualties, they secured a foothold from which to liberate Western Europe.
Reputable source - August 1945American History
The Atomic Bomb
In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians. Japan surrendered days later. The bombs were the product of the secret Manhattan Project, the largest scientific undertaking in history to that point.
Reputable source - 1945American History
World War II ends
Germany surrendered in May and Japan in August after the atomic bombings; the US emerged as the world's dominant economic and military power.
Reputable source - 1948American History
The Marshall Plan
To rebuild a war-shattered Western Europe and check the spread of communism, the United States launched the Marshall Plan in 1948, channeling some $13 billion in aid over four years. It followed the Truman Doctrine's pledge to support free peoples resisting Soviet pressure.
Reputable source - May 17, 1954The Civil Rights Movement
Brown v. Board of Education
On 17 May 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that segregating public schools by race was unconstitutional, overturning the 'separate but equal' doctrine of 1896. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that separating children solely by race denied Black children the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Primary source - May 17, 1954American History
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled school segregation unconstitutional, overturning "separate but equal."
Primary source - August 1955The Civil Rights Movement
The Murder of Emmett Till
In August 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped, tortured, and lynched by two white men after being accused of offending a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so the world could see what had been done; the two men were acquitted by an all-white jury in about an hour.
Reputable source - December 1955American History
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
When Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, Montgomery's Black community launched a boycott of the city's segregated buses. For 381 days they walked and carpooled, led by a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr., until the buses were desegregated by court order.
Reputable source - 1955–1956The Civil Rights Movement
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
On 1 December 1955 Rosa Parks, a seamstress and NAACP member, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Black residents responded with a boycott of the city buses that lasted over a year, led by a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. It ended when the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.
Reputable source - September 1957American History
The Little Rock Nine
In September 1957, nine Black students attempted to integrate all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. When the governor deployed the National Guard to block them and mobs threatened violence, President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the students and enforce Brown v. Board.
Reputable source - September 1957The Civil Rights Movement
The Little Rock Nine
In September 1957 nine Black students sought to enrol at all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. When the governor called out the National Guard to block them, President Eisenhower sent in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into the school.
Reputable source - February 1960The Civil Rights Movement
The Greensboro Sit-Ins
On 1 February 1960 four Black college students sat down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave when denied service. Their quiet protest spread within weeks to dozens of cities, and after six months the Greensboro lunch counter was desegregated.
Reputable source The Freedom Rides
In 1961 interracial groups of activists, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, rode buses into the segregated South to test a court ruling that banned segregation in interstate travel. The 'Freedom Riders' met savage violence — beatings and a firebombed bus — but pressed on, forcing federal intervention and a firm ban on segregation in bus terminals.
Reputable source- October 1962American History
The Cuban Missile Crisis
In October 1962, American spy planes discovered Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. For thirteen tense days, President Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev faced off as the world stood on the brink of nuclear war, until the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for U.S. pledges.
Reputable source The Birmingham Campaign
In the spring of 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led a campaign of marches and sit-ins against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Jailed, King wrote his 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'; when the city's police turned dogs and fire hoses on young marchers, the televised images shocked the nation.
Reputable source- August 28, 1963American History
The March on Washington
A quarter-million people marched for jobs and freedom; Martin Luther King Jr. delivered "I Have a Dream" at the Lincoln Memorial.
Primary source · 2 sources - August 28, 1963The Civil Rights Movement
The March on Washington
On 28 August 1963 roughly 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. There Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech, one of the most famous orations in American history.
Reputable source - November 22, 1963American History
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and then himself killed two days later; Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One.
Reputable source Freedom Summer
In the summer of 1964, civil rights organizations brought hundreds of volunteers, many of them white college students, to Mississippi to register Black voters and run 'freedom schools.' The campaign met fierce violence, including the murder of three activists — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Reputable source- July 2, 1964American History
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
Signed by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended segregation in public accommodations and banned employment discrimination — the most sweeping civil rights law since Reconstruction.
Primary source - July 2, 1964The Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
On 2 July 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights law since Reconstruction. It outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, banned segregation in public accommodations, and prohibited discrimination in employment.
Primary source - March 1965The Civil Rights Movement
Selma and Bloody Sunday
On 7 March 1965 some 600 marchers set out from Selma, Alabama, toward the state capital to demand voting rights, only to be beaten by state troopers with clubs and tear gas as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Televised images of 'Bloody Sunday' outraged the country; two weeks later, protected by federal troops, 25,000 marchers completed the journey to Montgomery.
Reputable source - 1964–1965American History
America Escalates the Vietnam War
After a reported clash in the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress in 1964 passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving President Johnson broad authority to wage war in Vietnam. In 1965 he ordered sustained bombing of the North and sent the first large U.S. ground forces, deepening America's involvement in a war that would eventually involve over half a million troops.
Primary source - August 6, 1965The Civil Rights Movement
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
On 6 August 1965 President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the literacy tests and other devices used to keep Black citizens from voting and empowered federal officials to register voters. By the end of the year, a quarter-million new Black voters had registered.
Primary source - August 6, 1965American History
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
After marchers were beaten on 'Bloody Sunday' in Selma, Alabama, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, banning the literacy tests and other devices used to disenfranchise Black voters and authorizing federal oversight of elections in the worst-offending areas.
Primary source - April 4, 1968The Civil Rights Movement
The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
On 4 April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had come to support striking sanitation workers. His killing set off grief and outbreaks of unrest in cities across the country.
Reputable source - April 11, 1968The Civil Rights Movement
The Fair Housing Act of 1968
Just a week after King's death, on 11 April 1968, President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, banning discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Long stalled in Congress, it finally passed in the wake of King's assassination.
Reputable source - June 28, 1969American History
The Stonewall Uprising
When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, in the early hours of June 28, 1969, patrons and neighbors fought back, sparking several nights of protest. The uprising galvanized a new, more militant movement for gay and lesbian rights.
Reputable source - July 20, 1969American History
The Moon Landing
On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, and Armstrong stepped onto the surface with the words 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,' as an estimated 600 million people watched on Earth.
Reputable source - August 1974American History
Watergate and the Resignation of Nixon
A 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex unraveled into a scandal that exposed a web of political sabotage and cover-up reaching the White House. Facing near-certain impeachment, President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974 — the only U.S. president ever to do so.
Reputable source - 1989–1991American History
The End of the Cold War
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 heralded the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, and in December 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved. The decades-long superpower confrontation ended without the feared nuclear war, leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower.
Reputable source - 1991American History
The Persian Gulf War
After Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States assembled a broad international coalition and, in early 1991, drove Iraqi forces out in a swift campaign — Operation Desert Storm — that combined a massive air war with a 100-hour ground offensive.
Reputable source - September 11, 2001American History
The September 11 attacks
Hijacked airliners destroyed the World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon; passengers forced down a fourth plane in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.
Reputable source · 2 sources - 2001–2003American History
The War on Terror: Afghanistan and Iraq
In response to 9/11, the United States launched the 'Global War on Terror.' It invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to topple the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, and in March 2003 invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Both campaigns won quickly but became long, costly occupations and insurgencies.
Reputable source - 2007–2009American History
The 2008 Financial Crisis
A collapse in the U.S. housing market and the failure of institutions loaded with risky mortgage securities triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The investment bank Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, credit froze worldwide, and the government mounted enormous bailouts as unemployment soared in the 'Great Recession.'
Reputable source - November 4, 2008American History
Barack Obama Elected President
On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeated John McCain to become the 44th president and the first African American elected to the office, winning 365 electoral votes on a message of hope and change amid the financial crisis.
Reputable source - March 23, 2010American History
The Affordable Care Act
President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act ('Obamacare') into law on March 23, 2010 — the largest overhaul of American health care since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. It expanded coverage to millions through insurance marketplaces and Medicaid expansion and barred insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Reputable source - June 26, 2015American History
Marriage Equality: Obergefell v. Hodges
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry, requiring all fifty states to license and recognize such marriages.
Reputable source - November 8, 2016American History
The 2016 Election: Donald Trump
In one of the biggest upsets in American political history, the businessman and reality-TV star Donald Trump, who had never held public office, defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on November 8, 2016. Trump won 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 227, flipping the industrial 'blue wall' of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — even as he lost the national popular vote by nearly three million.
Primary source - 2020American History
The COVID-19 Pandemic
In early 2020 the novel coronavirus spread across the United States, and in March the country locked down. Over the following years COVID-19 killed more than a million Americans, upended the economy and daily life, and prompted a record-fast development of vaccines.
Reputable source - May 25, 2020American History
The Murder of George Floyd and the 2020 Protests
On May 25, 2020, a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, killed George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes as he pleaded 'I can't breathe' — captured on a bystander's video. His death set off the largest wave of protests in U.S. history, with an estimated 15 to 26 million people demonstrating against racism and police brutality.
Reputable source - January 6, 2021American History
The January 6 Capitol Attack
On January 6, 2021, a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump — who falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen — stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify Joe Biden's victory, forcing lawmakers to flee and halting the count for hours. Order was restored that evening, and Congress certified the result.
Reputable source - June 24, 2022American History
Roe v. Wade Overturned: Dobbs v. Jackson
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that the Constitution confers no right to abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and returning the regulation of abortion to the states.
Reputable source - November 2024American History
Trump Returns: The 2024 Election
In November 2024, Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win a second, non-consecutive term as president, taking 312 electoral votes. Congress certified the result on January 6, 2025, and Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025 — the first president since Grover Cleveland to return to office after losing it.
Reputable source