Читать книгу The Handy American History Answer Book - David L Hudson - Страница 9

Оглавление

Timeline of U.S. Events

DateEvent
1513Spanish explorer Ponce de León sights Florida.
1587Sir Walter Raleigh founds a British colony in Roanoke, Virginia.
1607On May 14, John Smith and others found the Jamestown settlement in modern-day Virginia.
1626On May 6, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit purchases Manhattan Island from American Indians.
1631John Winthrop becomes the first governor of Massachusetts.
1633On June 19, Lord Cecil Baltimore obtains a charter for Maryland.
1634On March 25, the first English settlers arrive at present-day Maryland.
1636Harvard University is founded.
1642On June 14, Massachusetts passes the first compulsory education law.
1649On April 21, the Toleration Act is passed in Maryland, providing for religious freedom.
1652On May 18, Rhode Island passes a law declaring slavery illegal.
1662On April 23, Connecticut is chartered as a British colony.
1664On June 24, the colony of New Jersey is established.
1665On June 12, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam becomes a British territory and is named New York after the English Duke of York.
1681On March 1, William Penn receives a charter to start a colony in what would become known as Pennsylvania.
1682On June 18, William Penn founds the city of Philadelphia.
1701Yale University is founded.
1718The city of New Orleans is founded.
1721On May 21, South Carolina becomes a royal colony.
1733James Oglethorpe begins the colony of Georgia.
1734New York printer John Peter Zenger is arrested for seditious libel (he is later acquitted).
1746Princeton College receives its charter.
1749On May 19, King George II authorizes the Ohio Company to settle the region that became known as the Ohio Valley.
1751On May 11, Pennsylvania Hospital is founded—the first hospital in what would become the United States of America.
1752On May 10, Benjamin Franklin conducts his famous kite-flying, lightning experiment.
1765On March 22, the British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act, which imposes a host of taxes on American colonists.
On August 4, colonists in Massachusetts plant the first liberty tree in protest of what they perceive as autocratic British rules.
On October 7, the Stamp Act Congress begins meeting in New York.
1769On June 7, Daniel Boone begins exploring in what is now known as Kentucky.
1770On March 5, British soldiers fire into a crowd of angry American colonists in what became known as the “Boston Massacre.”
1774On June 13, Rhode Island becomes the first colony to ban the importation of slaves.
1775On March 23, Virginia politician Patrick Henry delivers his famous “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech.
On April 14, the first abolitionist group forms in Philadelphia.
On April 18, Paul Revere rode during nighttime hours to warn colonist in Concord of a pending attack by the British.
On April 19, the Battle of Lexington takes place—the first battle of the Revolutionary War.
On May 24, John Hancock is elected president of the Continental Congress.
On June 15, George Washington becomes the commander of the Continental Army.
On June 17, the Battle of Bunker Hill takes place.
1776In January, Thomas Paine’s work Common Sense is published. It provides support for the cause of American independence.
On June 10, the Continental Congress forms a committee to work on creating what became known as the Declaration of Independence. The committee consists of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Roger Livingstone.
On July 4, the Continental Congress approves of the Declaration of Independence drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson. The document includes a series of grievances against English King George III and famously declares that “all men are created equal.”
1777On November 15, the Articles of Confederation is released. This document establishes the structure of the American government.
1778France signs a treaty with the American forces, becoming its ally in the Revolutionary War against Great Britain.
1781The British army, under the direction of Lord Charles Cornwallis, surrenders at York-town.
1783The United States and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.
1787On June 19, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut introduces a proposal at the Constitutional Convention to call the country the United States.
On Dec. 7, Delaware is admitted as the first state.
On Dec. 12, Pennsylvania is admitted as the second state.
On Dec. 18, New Jersey is admitted as the third state.
1788On Jan. 2, Georgia is admitted as the fourth state.
On January 9, Connecticut is admitted as the fifth state.
On Feb. 6, Massachusetts is admitted as the sixth state.
On April 28, Maryland is admitted as the seventh state.
On May 23, South Carolina is admitted as the eighth state.
On June 21, New Hampshire is admitted as the ninth state.
On June 25, Virginia is admitted as the tenth state.
1789On April 1, the U.S. House of Representatives holds its first meeting.
On April 30, George Washington is inaugurated as the first president of the United States.
On June 8, U.S. Representative James Madison (VA) introduces his proposed bill of rights in what is called “The Great Rights of Mankind” speech.
On July 26, New York is admitted as the eleventh state.
On December 21, North Carolina is admitted as the twelfth state.
1790On May 29, Rhode Island is admitted as the thirteenth tate.
1791On March 4, Vermont is admitted as the fourteenth state.
1792On June 1, Kentucky is admitted as the fifteenth state.
1796On June 1, Tennessee is admitted as the sixteenth state.
1802On May 3, Washington, DC, is incorporated as a city.
On June 9, the U.S. Academy at West Point is founded.
1803On February 24, the U.S. Supreme Court decides Marbury v. Madison, establishing that the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review and can invalidate acts of Congress that are unconstitutional.
On March 1, Ohio is admitted as the seventeenth state.
On April 30, American ambassador Robert Livingstone and future President James Monroe sign the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, acquiring a huge tract of land of more than 828,000 square miles that covers parts of fifteen present-day states. President Thomas Jefferson announces the treaty to the American public on July 4.
1804On May 14, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark commence the so-called “Lewis and Clark expedition,” heading west from St. Louis.
On July 11, Aaron Burr shoots and kills Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
1806Future President Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson insulted Jackson’s wife, Rachel.
1807On March 2, Congress abolishes the African slave trade.
1812On April 30, Louisiana is admitted as the eighteenth state.
On December 12, the U.S. declares war on Great Britain, beginning the War of 1812.
1816On December 11, Indiana is admitted as the nineteenth state.
1817On December 10, Mississippi is admitted as the twentieth state.
1818On December 3, Illinois is admitted as the twenty-first state.
1819On December 14, Alabama is admitted as the twenty-second state.
1820On March 6, President James Monroe signs the Missouri Compromise. It establishes the dividing lines where slavery is legal and illegal.
On March 15, Maine is admitted as the twenty-third state.
1821On August 10, Missouri is admitted as the twenty-fourth state.
1823On December 2, President James Monroe delivers his annual message to Congress. In the address, he announces his foreign policy positions in statements that are known as “The Monroe Doctrine.”
1836On June 15, Arkansas is admitted as the twenty-fifth state.
1837On January 6, Michigan is admitted as the twenty-sixth state.
On May 10, the Panic of 1837 ensues with the failure of many banks.
1840On May 7, a tornado kills more than 300 people in Natchez, Mississippi.
On June 20, Samuel Morse patents the telegraph.
1845On March 3, Florida is admitted as the twenty-seventh state.
On December 29, Texas is admitted as the twenty-eighth state.
1846On December 28, Iowa becomes the twenty-ninth state.
1848On May 29, Wisconsin is admitted as the thirtieth state.
1851On June 2, Maine passes the first prohibition law on alcohol.
1852On March 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that slaves are property and denies Dred Scott his freedom.
1853On June 24, President Franklin Pierce signs a measure approving the Gadsden Purchase (much of modern-day New Mexico and part of Arizona) from Mexico.
1858On May 11, Minnesota is admitted as the thirty-second state.
1859On February 14, Oregon is admitted as the thirty-third state.
1860On December 20, South Carolina secedes from the Union.
1861On Jan. 29, Kansas is admitted as the thirty-fourth state.
On February 9, the Confederate States are formed with Jefferson Davis installed as President.
On April 12, Confederate forces fire on the federal garrison Fort Sumter. This is often cited as the beginning of the American Civil War.
On April 27, President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.
On May 8, Richmond, Virginia, is designated as the capital of the Confederacy.
1862On April 16, slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia.
On May 19, the Homestead Act is passed.
1863On January 1, President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. It proclaims that all persons held as slaves in the rebellious states are freed.
On June 20, West Virginia is admitted as the thirty-fifth state.
From July 1–3, the Union army defeats the Confederates at the bloody Battle of Gettysburg.
On November 19, President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.
1864On October 31, Nevada is admitted as the thirty-sixth state.
1865On January 1, Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude.
On April 9, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The Civil War ends a few months later. On April 14, John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Lincoln.
On December 6, the Thirteenth Amendment is ratified by the required number of states.
1866On April 9, the U.S. Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill of 1866.
1867On March 1, Nebraska is admitted as the thirty-seventh state.
On March 30, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward signs a treaty with Russia to purchase the land that forms the state of Alaska. It is called “Seward’s Folly.”
1868On February 24, President Andrew Johnson is impeached.
On May 16, the Senate fails to have enough votes to convict President Johnson of impeachment charges.
On May 22, the Great Train Robbery takes place in Reno, Nevada. The perpetrators steal nearly $100,000.
1869On May 15, the National Woman Suffrage Association is formed in New York City.
1875On June 2, Alexander Graham Bell successfully makes the first electronic transmission of sound.
1876On August 1, Colorado becomes the thirty-eighth state.
1881On July 2, President James A. Garfield is assassinated by Charles Guiteau. Vice President Chester A. Arthur succeeds him.
1882On April 3, notorious outlaw Jesse James is shot and killed by Robert Ford.
On May 6, Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, ending Chinese immigration.
1885On February 28, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published by author Mark Twain.
1888On May 7, inventor George Eastman patents his Kodak box camera.
1889On May 31, the Johnstown Flood leads to death of more than 2,000 in Pennsylvania.
On November 2, North and South Dakota are admitted as the thirty-ninth and fortieth states.
On November 8, Montana is admitted as the forty-first state.
On November 11, Washington is admitted as the forty-second state.
1890On May 12, Louisiana legalizes the sport of boxing, or prizefighting, as it was commonly called.
On July 3, Idaho becomes the forty-third state.
1893The Panic of 1893 begins, highlighted by a severe drop in the New York Stock Exchange.
1894On May 16, a devastating fire in Boston destroys nearly 200 buildings.
1896On January 4, Utah is admitted as the forty-fifth state.
On May 18, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Louisiana law mandating racial segregation on railways. The Court justifies the law by the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine.
1899On April 10, the U.S. and Spain sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the Spanish–American War. As a result of this treaty, Puerto Rico comes under U.S. control.
1900On April 30, the United States annexes Hawaii.
1901On September 6, President William McKinley is shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. President McKinley dies several days later.
1902On May 20, the U.S. ends its military occupation in Cuba.
1903On December 17, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright complete the first successful airplane flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1905On May 15, the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded.
1906A horrific earthquake in San Francisco kills more than 450 people.
1907On November 16, Oklahoma is admitted as the forty-sixth state.
1909On February 12, the National Association for the Advanced of Colored People (NAACP) forms.
On April 6, American explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reach the North Pole.
1912On January 6, New Mexico is admitted as the forty-seventh state.
On February 4, Arizona is admitted as the forty-eighth state.
1913On May 31, the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the direct election of U.S. Senators, is ratified.
1915On June 9, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigns his cabinet position.
1916On June 15, the Boy Scouts of America is formed.
1917The United States enters World War I.
On April 2, Jeannette Rankin (R, MT) serves her first day in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1918President Woodrow Wilson outlines his “Fourteen Points” for peace.
1919On June 4, the Senate passes a women’s suffrage measure.
1920The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition amendment) is ratified.
On August 18, the Nineteenth Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote.
1924On May 10, J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1925On May 5, teacher John Scopes is arrested in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution.
1929On February 14, the Valentine’s Day Massacre occurs as a result of a gangland war between gangsters Al Capone and Bugs Moran. Capone orders a hit on Moran’s headquarters.
On May 16, the first Academy Awards ceremony is held.
On October 24, the New York Stock exchange collapses in a day known as “Black Thursday.”
1931On March 19, the Nevada legislature votes to legalize gambling as a way to combat the Great Depression.
1933On March 12, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcasts his first fireside chat to the American public.
On May 18, President Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, authorizing the building of damns.
1934On June 6, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is established.
1937On May 3, Margaret Mitchell wins the Pulitzer Prize for her book Gone with the Wind.
On May 30, Chicago police fire on striking steel workers in what came to be known as the “Memorial Day Massacre.”
1939On May 16, the U.S. government first issues food stamps.
1940On May 15, the first McDonald’s restaurant is opened in San Bernardino, California.
1941On June 18, heavyweight champion Joe Louis rallies and knocks out Billy Conn to retain his world heavyweight title.
On December 7, Japanese aircraft bomb U.S. ships docked in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This attack led the U.S. to enter into World War II.
1945On February 23, 1945, U.S. troops display the American flag at Iwo Jima after a brutal battle with Japanese forces.
On August 6, the U.S. drops an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japanese. More than 140,000 people died from this attack.
On August 9, the U.S. drops an atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan.
1947On March 12, President Harry Truman announces the so-called “Truman Doctrine” in a message before Congress.
On April 15, Los Angeles Dodger Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to break the color barrier in major league baseball.
On June 5, Secretary of State George Marshall introduces the so-called “Marshall Plan” to assist West Berlin, which had become surrounded by the USSR occupation of East Germany.
1950On April 25, Chuck Cooper becomes the first African American to play in an NBA game.
1952On April 8, President Truman seizes the nation’s steel mills to avoid a strike.
1954On May 17, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in secondary public schools in unconstitutional and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On June 9, Joseph Welch, head counsel for the U.S. Army, famously asks U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy “Have you no decency, sir?” during Senate hearings.
1955On April 10, Dr. Jonas Salk successfully tests a vaccine for the deadly disease polio.
1956On April 27, Rocky Marciano retires from boxing. The heavyweight champion ended his career with an undefeated record of 49-0.
1959On January 3, Alaska becomes the forty-ninth state admitted into the United States.
On May 4, the first Grammy Awards are held.
On Aug. 21, Hawaii becomes the fiftieth state.
1961On March 1, President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
On May 1, Harper Lee wins the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her book To Kill a Mockingbird.
On May 14, a bus carrying the Freedom Riders is attacked and burned in Alabama.
1962On March 2, Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in a professional basketball game.
1963On April 12, the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, receives nationwide attention after the police use fire hoses and dogs on black children protesting civil rights abuses.
On June 10, President Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act.
On August 28, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington. Several other civil rights leaders delivered speeches, but Dr. King’s is the one that has had the most historic significance.
On November 22, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
1964On February 25, Cassius Marcellus Clay—later known as Muhammad Ali—defeats Charles “Sonny” Liston to win the world heavyweight title.
On July 2, President Johnson signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguably the most important civil rights bill of the twentieth century.
1965On February 21, Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.
On May 25, Muhammad Ali successfully defends his heavyweight title in Lewiston, Maine, with a first-round stoppage of former champion Sonny Liston. Some claim that Liston took a dive.
1967On April 27, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of his title.
On May 19, the U.S. bombs Hanoi.
On June 3, Aretha Franklin, the so-called “Queen of Soul,” hits #1 with her signature song Respect.
On June 13, President Johnson nominates Thurgood Marshall as the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1968On March 16, 1968, a platoon of American soldiers kills hundreds of unarmed civilians in the so-called Mai Lai Massacre.
On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while on the balcony of the second floor of the Lorraine Motel.
On June 3, the Poor Person’s March on Washington takes place.
On June 6, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy dies from gunshot wounds at an assassin’s hands the previous evening.
1969On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 lands on the Moon. Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the Moon, followed by crew member Buzz Aldrin. Fellow astronaut Michael Collins remains in orbit in the command spacecraft.
August 15–18, the Woodstock music festival is held in Bethel, New York. It is arguably the high point of the 1960s rock music and hippie era.
1970On May 1, four students are shot to death by national guardsmen during a disturbance at Kent State University.
On June 22, President Nixon signs the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
1972On June 22, President Nixon signs into law Title IX, prohibiting gender discrimination in college sports.
1973On January 22, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Texas law that criminalized abortion in Roe v. Wade.
1974On April 8, Henry Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run, breaking the record of former New York Yankee great Babe Ruth.
On August 8, President Nixon resigns because of fallout from the Watergate scandal. He is the first (and as of now, only) U.S. president to resign from office.
1975On April 4, Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Microsoft.
1976On April 1, Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs found Apple Computer.
1977On April 18, Alex Haley wins a Pulitzer Prize for his book Roots.
1978On June 9, Larry Holmes defeats Ken Norton via split decision over 15 rounds to win the world heavyweight championship—a title he would hold until 1985.
1979On June 18, President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapon.
1980On June 23, David Letterman’s late night show—“The Letterman Show”—debuts on network television.
1981On January 30, John F. Hinckley Jr. shoots President Ronald Reagan, who later recovers from his wounds.
On May 1, tennis star Billie Jean King announces that she is in a relationship with another woman.
1982On April 19, Sally Ride becomes the first female astronaut in U.S. history.
On June 21, a jury finds John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting of President Ronald Reagan.
On June 24, the Equal Rights Amendment is defeated.
1983Alice Walker wins the Pulitzer Price for The Color Purple.
1986On January 28, the space shuttle Challenger explodes.
On April 20, Chicago Bull guard Michael Jordan scores 63 points in a playoff game against the Boston Celtics.
1991On May 1, Oakland As star Rickey Henderson steals his 993th base, breaking Lou Brock’s all-time record.
1992On April 29, a state jury in California acquits four officers in the beating of African American motorist Rodney King. This announcement leads to rioting in the city.
1994On June 17, L.A. police chase a bronco down the freeway carrying legendary football star O.J. Simpson, who is later tried and acquitted for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a companion named Ronald Goldman.
1995On April 19, the federal office building in Oklahoma City is bombed, killing 168 people and injuring more than 500.
1998On May 18, the United States and 20 states file an anti-trust action against Microsoft.
1999On February 12, President Bill Clinton is acquitted in his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate.
On April 20, two high school students—Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—kill 12 other students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. The two students also kill themselves.
On May 21, daytime soap opera star Susan Lucci finally wins a Daytime Emmy after 19 previous nominations.
2001On September 11, 2001, terrorists fly planes into the World Trade Towers in New York City, killing thousands. A second plane crashes into the Pentagon, while a third crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers try to thwart the highjackers.
2004Massachusetts becomes the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.
2005On May 9, the website The Huffington Post is formed, featuring a variety of left-leaning commentaries.
On May 31, a Vanity Fair article reveals that former FBI official Mark Felt was the “Deep Throat” source for the Watergate reporting.
2007On April 16, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho engages in a deadly massacre, killing more than 30 people on campus before killing himself.
2008On November 4, Barack Obama is elected the nation’s first African American president.
2011On May 2, U.S. special forces kill 9/11 terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
On May 25, Oprah Winfrey airs the last episode of her award-winning talk show, Oprah.
2012President Barack Obama announces his support for same-sex marriage.
The Handy American History Answer Book

Подняться наверх